Hazel Court

Her father, G.W. Court, was a cricketer who played for Durham CCC. She attended Boldmere School and Highclare College, and later studied drama at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and the Alexandra Theatre. At sixteen, she met film director Anthony Asquith in London; the meeting gained her a brief part in Champagne Charlie (1944). Court won a British Critics Award for her role as a crippled girl in Carnival (1946). She also appeared in Holiday Camp (1947) and Bond Street (1948). Her first role in a fantasy film was in Ghost Ship (1952). Devil Girl from Mars (1954) was a low-budget film produced by the Danziger Brothers.

In the 1957–58 television season, she co-starred in a CBS sitcom filmed in Britain, Dick and the Duchess, as Jane Starrett, a patrician British woman married to an insurance claims investigator (Patrick O'Neal). Court appeared in an episode of The Buccaneers in 1957 titled Gentleman Jack and the Lady. She travelled back and forth between North America and Britain, appearing in four episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. She had parts in A Woman of Mystery (1958), The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), an entry in the British film series the Edgar Wallace Mysteries, The Man Who Was Nobody (1960), and Doctor Blood's Coffin (1961), among others.

By the early 1960s, Court was based in the USA. She featured in the Edgar Allan Poe horror films The Premature Burial (1962) with Ray Milland, The Raven (1963) with Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff, and The Masque of the Red Death (1964), the last two with Vincent Price. She appeared on occasion in the early 1960s TV anthology series, The Dick Powell Show. Court also appeared in episodes of several TV series, including Adventures in Paradise, Mission: Impossible, Bonanza, Dr. Kildare, Danger Man, Twelve O'Clock High, Burke's Law, Sam Benedict, Gidget, McMillan and Wife, Mannix, The Wild Wild West, Thriller, Rawhide with Clint Eastwood, and in The Fear, the penultimate episode of the original The Twilight Zone. She had a brief uncredited role in Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981).

In addition to acting, she studied sculpting in Italy and was a painter and sculptor. Court was married to actor Dermot Walsh from 1949 until 1963. They had a daughter, Sally Walsh, who appeared with her mother in The Curse of Frankenstein. In 1964, she married actor and director Don Taylor, whom she met while shooting an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. They had two children and were married until Taylor's death in 1998. Court died of a heart attack at her home near Lake Tahoe, California, on 15 April 2008, aged 82. Her autobiography, Horror Queen, was released in the UK a week after her death.