Yvonne Craig

A beautiful and engaging actress best known for her role as Barbara Gordon, a.k.a. Batgirl, on the playful TV classic "Batman" (ABC 1966-68), Yvonne Craig started out as a ballet dancer. She was second lead dancer in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo before moving into acting in her 20s. Her early acting career included a series of small film parts, including roles in teen hit "Gidget" (1959), jazz biopic "The Gene Krupa Story" (1959), and western "The Young Land" (1959), where she appeared alongside Dennis Hopper, all in 1959. That same year, she also began appearing in the teen comedy "The Many Lives of Dobie Gillis" (CBS 1959-1963); she played six different girls wooed by the title character over the course of three seasons. Craig maintained a steady film career through the '60s, co-starring opposite Elvis Presley in two of his most popular films, "It Happened at the World's Fair" (1963) and "Kissin' Cousins (1964), playing a dangerous Russian ballerina opposite super spy James Coburn in "In Like Flint" (1967), and starring in the cult favorite "Mars Needs Women" (1967). She also reunited with her "Dobie Gillis" co-star Dwayne Hickman in the teen comedy "Ski Party" (1965), which featured musical performances from Lesley Gore, garage rockers The Hondells and ski-sweater-clad James Brown. During this period, Craig also appeared regularly on television in guest roles before landing her career-defining part as Barbara Gordon, a.k.a. Batgirl, on the campy hit "Batman." After that show's end, Craig returned to her guest roles - most memorably as Marta, the green-skinned alien slave on the "Star Trek" (NBC 1966-69) episode "Whom Gods Destroy" - before retiring at the dawn of the '90s. Late in her life, Craig appeared on the animated children's series "Olivia" (Nickelodeon 2009-2012), voicing the character of Grandma. Yvonne Craig died of breast cancer on August 17, 2015 at her home in Pacific Palisades, California. She was 78.