Sandahl Bergman

Sandahl Bergman didn't start out wielding a steel sword. Her first real weapon was sweat in the Broadway rehearsal rooms under the watchful eye of Bob Fosse. The director saw in her an almost alien look by the standards of the time. She was tall, with endless limbs and a technical precision that intimidated her castmates.

In 1979, she appeared in All That Jazz. She didn't need dialogue because her body told the story of dance's effort better than any script could. That scene in Take Off with Us remains a style guide for understanding the elegant eroticism of the 1970s.

She performed almost all of her own stunts.

The woman who didn't need rescuing

John Milius was looking for a warrior who didn't look like a model in disguise. In 1982, filming Conan the Barbarian in Almería changed the rules of the game for women in action cinema. Bergman played Valeria with a ferocity that forced Arnold Schwarzenegger to raise his physical game so he wouldn't be overshadowed on screen.

And she paid a price for it. During a fight choreography sequence, she lost part of a finger's phalanx after a mistake with a real sword. But she didn't stop production. That physical commitment earned her the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year in 1983.

It was the first time audiences saw a mercenary who died protecting the hero, rather than the other way around.

The industry didn't know what to do with a woman six foot two who could hold her own against bodybuilders. In 1985, she turned down the lead role in Red Sonja to play the villain, Queen Gedren. She thought the antagonist role had more nuance and dramatic range.

It was a commercial miscalculation.

The B-movie labyrinth

From that point on, her career moved into the video rental market. Titles such as She in 1984 or Hell Comes to Frogtown in 1988 were a regular presence on the sci-fi shelves of low-budget films. Yet her magnetism remained intact despite tiny budgets and mediocre scripts.

In the nineties, her presence faded into occasional TV guest spots. She appeared in shows such as Murder, She Wrote or Sliders while big studio films looked for more nuanced performers. Her last credited feature film appearance came in 2003 with The Singing Detective.

Since retiring, she has lived in California. She keeps a low profile, staying away from the media spotlight and the nostalgia conventions that many stars of her generation tend to attend.

Her career total comes to just over forty credits across film and television.