Her dying, from an unspecified sickness, was confirmed by Jenkins, her former husband.
Ms. Hunnicutt, an auburn-haired Texan from Fort Price, first gained discover for taking part in seductive girls in 1960s sitcoms like “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Get Sensible,” and for portraying a mob-connected tv star within the 1969 movie “Marlowe,” reverse James Garner. When she moved to London that yr after her marriage to Hemmings, a British actor identified for starring in Michelangelo Antonionio’s “Blow-Up,” she sought alternatives to reveal her vary as an actress, past the sexpot roles she had been supplied in Hollywood.
“In California I used to be happening the trail of being constructed up on my seems to be. I really feel I used to be very fortunate to flee,” she advised the Guardian in 1974.
Earlier that yr, she had turned down a suggestion to play the feminine lead in a blockbuster display adaptation of “The Depend of Monte Cristo,” reverse Richard Chamberlain. As a substitute she took a low-paying half in a stage model of Émile Zola’s novel “Thérèse Raquin,” aiming to solidify her standing as a critical actress. “The day I die,” she defined, “I don’t want to be remembered as a woman Texan starlet with a very good face.”
For years, nevertheless, Ms. Hunnicutt was identified to British viewers as the girl with “essentially the most luminously stunning face on tv,” as Richard Final, a tv critic for the Day by day Telegraph, as soon as put it. Casting administrators sought her out for elements that showcased her statuesque determine, and she or he was reportedly in line to be the primary Bond lady reverse Roger Moore, who was succeeding Sean Connery as 007 in “Stay and Let Die” (1973). By one account, she turned down the function as a result of she had lately given start to her first son. (The half went to Jane Seymour as a substitute.)
Ms. Hunnicutt might be alluring in a single function, enigmatic within the subsequent. She delivered acclaimed performances in BBC historic dramas, notably because the enigmatic Charlotte Stant, the ex-mistress of a nobleman, in a 1972 adaptation of Henry James’s “The Golden Bowl,” and as Tsarina Alexandra, the spouse of Nicholas II of Russia, within the 1974 historic saga “Fall of Eagles.” She additionally carried out regularly onstage, together with because the title character in 1979 productions of “Peter Pan” and Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler,” and as authors Mary Shelley and Edith Wharton, whom she portrayed in performs that explored the intersection between every author’s life and artwork.
Late in her profession, Ms. Hunnicutt returned to the USA to look on the final three seasons of “Dallas,” the hit prime-time cleaning soap opera that resulted in 1991. She performed an understated Englishwoman — Vanessa Beaumont, a former flame of J.R. Ewing who had secretly borne his baby — reasonably than a local Texan like herself.
By then, she had made herself at house in Britain following a tumultuous first marriage to Hemmings. Whereas he was an emblem of Swinging Sixties London, she was extra demure, dismissive of sexual liberation and keen on the conservatism that she present in elements of her adopted nation.
“No false fingernails, no false eyelashes, your hair might be mussed up,” she remarked. “You’d by no means get away with that in Fort Price.”
An solely baby, Virginia Gayle Hunnicutt was born in Fort Price on Feb. 6, 1943. Her father, an Military colonel, served within the South Pacific throughout World Battle II and later oversaw an Military Reserve college in Fort Price. Her mom was a homemaker.
Ms. Hunnicutt studied theater arts on the College of California at Los Angeles, receiving a bachelor’s diploma in 1965. She was found by a expertise scout whereas performing in a neighborhood theater manufacturing, and in 1966 she made her movie debut with a supporting function in “The Wild Angels,” starring Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra.
Months later, she met Hemmings at a celebration at actor Peter Lawford’s house on Santa Monica seaside. “It was immediate combustion,” she recalled.
Hemmings was selling “Blow-Up,” during which he performed a suave vogue photographer who inadvertently images a homicide. He would later describe Ms. Hunnicutt and him as “a poor man’s Taylor and Burton,” referring to the fraught relationship between actors Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton: “It was a Hollywood romance, however it wasn’t meant to final.”
The couple married in 1968, in a Beverly Hills wedding ceremony with singing by the Mamas and the Papas and an orchestra performed by Henry Mancini. Not lengthy after, Ms. Hunnicutt found that her husband was having an affair with Samantha Eggar, one among his co-stars.
“It practically destroyed me,” she mentioned, though the couple stayed collectively lengthy sufficient for Ms. Hunnicutt to co-star with Hemmings in “Fragment of Worry” (1970) and to be directed by him in “Operating Scared” (1972).
“He was essentially the most charismatic human being I’ve ever met,” she advised the Telegraph in 2004, the yr after Hemmings’s dying at 62. “He had an urge for food for all times that was fairly irresistible. I used to be completely, completely in love with him. I didn’t suppose I may breathe if he wasn’t there.”
They divorced within the mid-1970s, and some years later she married Jenkins, who edited the London Night Customary and later the Occasions of London. With him, she grew to become a fixture of the London social scene, internet hosting events at marquee buildings like St. James’s Palace and Battersea Energy Station. “Simon is a part of the institution,” she mentioned, “and as his spouse, I’m too.”
They divorced in 2009. Survivors embody a son from her first marriage, actor Nolan Hemmings, who appeared within the World Battle II miniseries “Band of Brothers”; a son from her second marriage, Edward Jenkins; and 5 grandchildren.
Ms. Hunnicutt’s different credit included roles within the horror movies “Eye of the Cat” (1969) and “The Legend of Hell Home” (1973), in addition to within the thriller “Goal” (1985), with Gene Hackman and Matt Dillon. She additionally starred with Jeremy Brett within the 1980 premiere of ITV’s “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” because the crafty American singer and actress Irene Adler.
Away from the stage and display, Ms. Hunnicutt wrote “Well being and Magnificence in Motherhood” (1984) and edited a collection of love letters, “Dearest Virginia” (2004), that her father had despatched to her mom throughout World Battle II. She found the letters whereas cleansing out her household’s house in Fort Price and mentioned they supplied solace, bringing her nearer to her late father and revealing the depth of his dedication to her mom, whereas she recovered from a years-long sickness following a hysterectomy.
“I got here to know my very own set of values and code of dwelling by way of studying them,” Ms. Hunnicutt mentioned. “They don’t seem to be essentially the norm within the reasonably unique, complicated worlds I’ve been a part of in my grownup life.”