Dana Wynter (8 June 1931 – 5 May 2011) was a German-born English actress, who was raised in England and Southern Africa. She appeared in film and television for over forty years beginning in the 1950s, her best known film being Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

Biography

In 1956, Wynter married celebrity attorney Greg Bautzer; they divorced in 1981. She and Bautzer had one child — Mark Ragan Bautzer, born on 29 January 1960. Wynter, once referred to as Hollywood's "oasis of elegance," divided her time between her homes in California and Glendalough, County Wicklow, Ireland. An anti-apartheid advocate, she refused to open a performance center because she discovered that black and white children would have to attend on alternate days. She also planned to make a film criticizing the policy, which was to have been written by an American and filmed in Australia.

In the late 1980s, Wynter authored the column "Grassroots" for the newspaper The Guardian in London. Writing in both Ireland and California, her works concentrated mainly on life in both locations leading her to use the titles Irish Eyes and California Eyes for a number of her publications.

July 2008 saw Wynter involved in a legal dispute over the proceeds of the sale of a €125,000 Paul Henry painting, Evening on Achill Sound. The painting, which hung in the family home in County Wicklow, was said to have been bought for her in 1996 by her son, Mark Bautzer, as a gift. The dispute was resolved in the High Court in 2009.

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