Biography for
Dyanne Thorne More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

Mini Biography

Strikingly buxom, ravishing and voluptuous redheaded stunner Dyanne Thorne shall forever live on in cult exploitation cinema infamy for her ferocious and frightening portrayal of wicked Nazi villainess Ilsa in the notoriously nasty "Ilsa" features made throughout the 1970s.

Dyanne was born on October 14, 1943, in Greenwich, Connecticut, and grew up in New Jersey and New Zealand. She gave her first performance at age three in a church play. She studied acting in New York with 'Stella Adler' and Lee Strasberg. Dyanne made her film debut with a minor part as a college student in the comedy Who Was That Lady? (1960). She was especially impressive as a kinky swinger in Joseph W. Sarno's sensational soft-core gem Sin in the Suburbs (1964). She had a small role as a cocktail waitress in the groovy satire The President's Analyst (1967). Other memorable roles include a faithless wife in the tawdry _Point of Terror (1967)_ (), the bumbling Fairy Godmother in the bawdy _The Erotic Adventures of Pinochio (1968)_, an alluring witch in the steamy Blood Sabbath (1972), a hooker in the crude Wam Bam Thank You Spaceman (1975), one of the titular lovely ladies in the wild The Swinging Barmaids (1975), a batty asylum inmate in the tacky Hellhole (1985) and James Belushi's aggressively flirtatious transsexual father in the amusing deadpan hoot Real Men (1987).

Dyanne did guest spots on the TV shows "Star Trek" (1966), "Naked City" (1958), "Felony Squad" (1966), "Car 54, Where Are You?" (1961), "T.H.E. Cat" (1966) and "The Wackiest Ship in the Army" (1965). Outside of her film and TV work, Thorne has also performed in Broadway road tours and done comedy on the Las Vegas stage (she starred in her own popular comedy revue called "Sex Over 40"). In real life she is the total radical opposite of her cruel and formidable screen persona: She's a very kind and sweet woman who's an ordained minister and co-founder of the International Science of Mind Prayer Circle and runs her own private wedding chapel service with her actor/musician husband Howard Maurer in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Spouse

Trivia

Measurements: 37C-22-33 (at age 15), 37D-22-35 (filming the "Ilsa" films), (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine).

Studied for a degree in Anthropology at UCLA, but didn't complete it. Instead, she has earned a Ph.D. in Comparative religion.

Has provided voiceovers for documentaries and industrial films.

Personal Quotes

A wonderfully funny letter was sent to me signed by a fraternity in Boston, Massachusetts, medical school. The fraternity for doctors had voted me the body on which they would most like to operate.

It was a chance to put my craft to work. Even so, my Jewish friends were appalled that I would appear in such a film. My husband is Jewish and he went nuts when he first read the script. But as an actress I didn't think about that. I was just playing a role. It was a job to me and I did the best I could with it. I never tried to glorify Ilsa. I felt she was a character to pity, rather than to emulate. I wanted to show the truth about her.

If you do too good a job of playing a villain, you will suffer for it. Well-known friends of mine in the industry reprimanded me for it. They said the film would hurt my Hollywood career and that people would hate me personally for playing Ilsa -- and they were right. It caused me to lose a good deal of film work. I could no longer get in to see the major studio casting directors and I couldn't even get an agent to represent me. They were scared to handle me.

There have been so many broken hopes and false promises in my career. But I just keep on keeping on. It's my versatility that has kept me alive -- not necessarily my talent, but my willingness to try anything. I know I've brought pleasure to a certain group of people. If I had been in more conventional Hollywood films, perhaps I would have been lost in the shuffle.