Sandra Dee was the wife of the late music legend Bobby Darin. Kate Bosworth portrayed her in the biopic, Beyond the Sea, released late in 2004.
"I thought they were my friends," she said in an interview that year with The Associated Press, referring to her former bosses. "But I found out on the last picture (A Man Could Get Killed) that I was simply a piece of property to them. I begged them not to make me do the picture, but they insisted."May she rest in peace.
Born Alexandra Zuck in Bayonne, N.J., Dee became a model while in grade school.
In a mid-career interview with The Associated Press, she explained her name change: "I used to sign vouchers and sign-out sheets with 'Alexandra Dee.' Somehow it stuck." When she was signed to her first film, she said, "'Sandra Dee' was the name they gave me."
Dee made an independent film Rosie! (1968), starring with Rosalind Russell, but her movie career dwindled after that.
In a March 1991 interview with People magazine, Dee said she was sexually abused as a child by her stepfather and pushed into stardom by her mother. Dee, who turned to pills and alcohol, said she hit bottom after her mother died in 1988.
"I couldn't function," she told People, adding that she began drinking more than a quart of scotch a day as her weight fell to 80 pounds. She said she stayed home almost constantly for three years.
Dee credited her son with helping her turn her life around. She began seeing a therapist regularly and hoped to land a job on a TV series.
Kate Bosworth portrayed Dee in last year's movie Beyond the Sea, a biography of Darin.
Actor Kevin Spacey, who played Darin the film, has said Dee, who was living as a virtual recluse in Los Angeles, approved of the film. "She called me...and said she loved it," he said last year.
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