Obituary: Sue Lloyd - Glamorous actress who appeared in Crossroads, The Avengers and The Ipcress File

IN THE 1960s when a British film or television producer wanted a sexy, independent, modern young woman you could be pretty sure that Sue Lloyd would be pretty near the top of their wish list.

The glamorous, dark-haired actress, with the alluring eyes, long eyelashes and distinctive beauty spot on her cheek, turned up at some point on most of the shows that defined that decade and she was a regular on the ITC adventure series The Baron.

Although she was restricted to a guest slot on the TV version of The Avengers, the show that redefined a woman’s role in saving the world from mad criminals, Lloyd did get a shot at the female lead in the short-lived theatre version, creating the character of Hannah Wild on the London stage in the early 1970s.

In 1979 Lloyd became a reluctant regular on Crossroads. “The soap was renowned for its wobbly scenery, bizarre storylines and regular slaughtering by the critics,” she wrote in her memoirs. “Why would I, just back from filming The Pink Panther [Revenge of the Pink Panther] with Peter Sellers in the south of France and about to embark on the comedy The Upchat Line with John Alderton, want to get involved in a project like that?”

But the producers were persistent. Lloyd was talked into it and she eventually appeared in more than 700 episodes. Her character Barbara Brady was supposedly a housekeeper (and suspected poisoner), but the housekeeper bit was just a front, as she was really a romantic novelist.

Not only did her character marry the motel owner David Hunter, but off-screen Lloyd and Ronald Allen, the actor who played David, became a couple too. Previously Lloyd had had a brief fling with Sean Connery in the 1960s and she was also at one time involved with Peter Sellers. Lloyd and Allen eventually married in 1991 shortly before his death from lung cancer.

Although she was approaching 40, Lloyd was not ready to ditch the sexy image that had made her a star in the 1960s and she had a major role in The Stud and The Bitch, the controversial low-brow sex dramas that revived Joan Collins’s career.

Adapted from the best-sellers written by Joan’s sister Jackie Collins, they involved copious amounts of nudity, which was controversial, at least partly because of the age of the women and because Collins had come up through the Rank charm school and was regarded as “old school”. The films were both big hits.

Collins played Fontaine Khaled, the bored wife of a wealthy businessman. Lloyd was her friend Vanessa Grant. After Lloyd’s death, Joan Collins tweeted: “Sad 2 hear of death of Sue Lloyd. Worked with her on Stud and Bitch. Had 2 get drunk to do nude pool scene in Stud – almost drowned laughing!”

A doctor’s daughter, Susan Margery Jeaffreson Lloyd was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, but grew up largely in Birmingham, where she showed early promise as a ballet dancer. She won a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School at Sadler’s Wells and she was reputedly part of the last batch of debutants to be presented to the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

She had a spell with Lionel Blair’s troupe, but she was tall for a dancer and was forced into thinking about alternatives. She worked as a fashion model and took acting lessons. And it was as an actress that she was to enjoy her greatest success.

Her career took off in the mid-1960s when she was cast alongside Michael Caine’s famously downbeat everyman spy Harry Palmer in the film The Ipcress File. She played Jean Courtney, one of his colleagues with whom he becomes romantically involved.

At much the same time Lloyd landed the role of Cordelia Winfield in The Baron. Cordelia was to The Baron, what Emma Peel was to John Steed. The role had actually been intended for a man and Lloyd’s casting reflected changing social attitudes and the success of The Avengers (and pressure from the US buyers).

Lloyd went on to appear in dozens of films and televison shows, including Department S, Hadleigh, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), His and Hers, Percy, The Persuaders! and The Sweeney. She also worked regularly on The Two Ronnies.

She and Allen were written out of Crossroads in 1985, but they acted together again on The Comic Strip’s Eat the Rich and Bergerac. After Allen’s death, Lloyd acted less often and spent more time painting.

In the 1990s she made a guest appearance in Keeping Up Appearances and reprised her character from The Ipcress File in a belated installment in the Harry Palmer adventures Bullet to Beijing, alongside Michael Caine and Jason Connery. She also wrote an autobiography It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time. She had no children. BRIAN PENDREIGH