Helga Liné

Biography

Helga Liné, born Helga Lina Stern, is a Spanish actress of German birth, also known for her work as a circus performer, model and vedette. Over a career spanning more than half a century, she became a recognised figure in Spanish and Italian genre cinema of the 1960s and 1970s.

Born in Berlin in 1931, according to the record used here, although some sources give 1932, she grew up in a circus family that moved to Portugal to escape the Nazi regime. There she began performing at the age of eight as an acrobat and contortionist, and at thirteen she made her film debut in La mantilla de Beatriz (1946). She worked as a showgirl and actress across Portugal, Spain and Brazil before moving to Italy, where she made many spaghetti westerns, peplums, horror films and comedies.

In the 1970s she became associated with Spanish fantastic cinema, with titles such as Pánico en el Transiberiano. On television she played Javi's mother in Verano azul. She later worked with Pedro Almodóvar in Labyrinth of Passion and Law of Desire. She settled in Buenos Aires in 1991, though she has continued to appear occasionally in theatre and television. In 2018 she received the Nosferatu Award at the Sitges Film Festival for her career, and her name remains linked to the horror cinema of those decades.

Key films

• Panic on the Trans-Siberian Express (1972): a lead role in one of her best-remembered Spanish fantastic films.
• Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon (1964): one of her early major appearances in Italian peplum cinema.
• Labyrinth of Passion (1982): a supporting role in an early Pedro Almodóvar film.
• Law of Desire (1987): an appearance in another key Almodóvar film.