Jill St. John

Jill St. John Wiki

Real Name: Jill Arlyn Oppenheim
Birth Place: Los Angeles, California, USA
Birth Date: August 19, 1940
Occupation: Actress, Soundtrack

Jill St. John Biography

An incredible piece of 1960s eye candy, Jill St. John absolutely smoldered on the big screen, a trendy presence in lightweight comedy, spirited adventure and spy intrigue, and perhaps best known for her bikini-clad, sexpot roles. Although she was not called upon to do much more than frolic in the sun and playfully taunt and tempt as needed, this tangerine-topped stunner managed to do her job very, very well. A remarkably bright woman in real life, she was smart enough to play the Hollywood game to her advantage and did so for nearly two decades before looking elsewhere for fun and contentment.Jill St. John was actually born Jill Oppenheim on August 19, 1940 in Los Angeles. On stage and radio from age 5, she was pretty much prodded by a typical stage mother. Making her TV debut at age nine in a production of The Christmas Carol (1949) (TV), Jill began blossoming and attracting the right kind of attention in her late teens. She signed with Universal Pictures at age 16 and made her film debut as a perky support in Summer Love (1958) starring then-hot John Saxon. Moving ahead, she filled the bill as a slightly dingy love interest in such innocuous fun as The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker (1959), Holiday for Lovers (1959), Tender Is the Night (1962), Who's Minding the Store? (1963) and Honeymoon Hotel (1964). Whether the extremely photogenic Jill had talent or not was never a fundamental issue with casting agents. In the late 1960s she matured into a classy, ravishing redhead who not only came equipped with a knockout figure but some sly, suggestive one-liners as well that had her male co-stars (and audiences) more than interested. She co-starred with Bob Hope in the dismal Eight on the Lam (1967), but she would be included in a number of his NBC specials over the years. She was also a part of Frank Sinatra's "in" crowd and co-starred with him in both Come Blow Your Horn (1963) (for which she received a Golden Globe nomination) and Tony Rome (1967). She skillfully traded sexy quips with Anthony Franciosa in the engaging TV pilot to the hit series "The Name of the Game" (1968), but Jill's most famous role came in 1971 when she played seductive jewel smuggler Tiffany Case, a ripe and ready Bond girl, in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever (1971) opposite Sean Connery's popular "007" character. On camera her glossy femme fatales had a delightfully brazen, tongue-in-cheek quality to them. Off-camera, Jill lived the life of a jet-setter.Jill has been married four times, first to millionaire Neil Durbin in 1957 when she was just 16 (the marriage lasted one year). Her second husband, from 1960 to 1963, was sports car racer Lance Reventlow, son of Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton. Despite their divorce, Jill refers to him as "my late husband" in interviews (Reventlow died in a plane crash in 1972). She wed popular crooner Jack Jones in 1967, but they divorced two years later. Over the next decade, Jill was linked to such influential men as Sinatra, Jack Nicholson, Bill Hudson, and even Henry Kissinger. She seems to have found her soulmate in present husband actor Robert Wagner, whom she married in 1990 after living together for eight years. Jill has known Wagner since the late 1950s and first worked with him in the soapy film drama Banning (1967). Abandoning acting out of boredom, she has returned on rare occasions. She played against type as a crazed warden in the prison drama The Concrete Jungle (1982) and has had some fun cameos alongside Wagner both on film (The Player (1992)) and even TV ("Seinfeld" (1990)). In the late 1990s they started touring together in A.R. Gurney's popular two-person stage reading of "Love Letters." Jill's lifelong passion for cooking (her parents were restaurateurs) has turned profitable over the years. She has written several cookbooks and actually appeared as a TV chef and "in house" cooking expert on morning TV. She also served as a food columnist for the USA Weekend newspaper.

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