Stella Stevens (born Estelle Caro Eggleston on September 30, 1939 in Yazoo City, Mississippi) is an American actress, film producer film director and nude model who began her acting career in 1959.
Stevens was born in Yazoo City although some sources mistakenly indicate the hamlet of Hot Coffee, Mississippi as the place of her birth. This was a publicity device.
She married electrician Noble Herman Stephens on December 1, 1954, probably in Memphis, by whom she had her only child, actor/producer Andrew Stevens. She and Herman Stephens divorced three years later, although she retained a variation of his surname as her own professional name. She was formerly Kate Jackson's mother-in-law. She has three grandchildren.
She was first under contract to 20th Century Fox, then dropped after six months. After winning the role of "Appassionata Von Climax" in Li'l Abner (1959), she got a contract with Paramount Studios (1959-1963) and later Columbia Pictures (1964-1968). She shared the 1960 Golden Globe Award for "Most Promising Newcomer - Female" with Tuesday Weld, Angie Dickinson, and Janet Munro.
In 1960, she was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for January (and had featured pictorials in 1965 and 1968). She was listed among the 100 sexiest stars of the 20th century (#27). During the 1960s, she was one of the ten most photographed women in the world, along with Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, Ann-Margret and Raquel Welch.
In 1962, she starred opposite Elvis Presley in Girls! Girls! Girls!. Later that year, she portrayed Jerry Lewis's love interest in The Nutty Professor. 1970 saw her featured in The Ballad of Cable Hogue with Jason Robards. In 1972, she appeared in Irwin Allen's The Poseidon Adventure as "Linda Rogo" (the former-hooker wife of Ernest Borgnine's character).
Throughout her career, she appeared in dozens of TV shows and was a regular on the 1981-1982 prime-time soap opera Flamingo Road. She teamed with the late Sandy Dennis in a touring production of an all-female version of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, playing the messy one.
She produced and directed two films, The Ranch (1989) and The American Heroine (1979).
