Yutte Stensgaard (born May 14, 1946) is a Danish actress born in Thisted, Jutland, Denmark, best known for her starring role in Hammer's Lust for a Vampire.

Born as Jytte Stensgaard, she moved to the United Kingdom to improve her English in 1963, she worked as an Au Pair, studied stenography and became a model for a time. She started her acting career in 1968 in the film La Ragazza con la pistola (English: Girl with a Pistol). Roles followed in such diverse TV-series as The Saint (with Roger Moore), Jason King, On The Buses and Doctor in the House, in which she guest roles, as well as a larger role in an episode of The Persuaders!, playing a Judo instructor who teams up with Danny Wilde (Tony Curtis). She also played in the low-budget sci-fi sex comedy Zeta One (1969).

Her most famous role is that of the vampire Carmilla/Mircalla in Hammer's Lust for a Vampire. The film was the sequel to The Vampire Lovers which had starred Ingrid Pitt as Mircalla. The original film was an adaptation of Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, however Lust for a Vampire shared little with the novel and only used the vampire characters, and was thus a completely new story. In the film the bisexual Carmilla infiltrates an all-girl boarding school while falling in love with a novelist.
Stensgaard auditioned to be a Doctor Who companion (Jo Grant), alongside Jon Pertwee's Doctor. Towards the end of her career appeared as a hostess in the popular game show The Golden Shot (hosted by the late Bob Monkhouse).

Stensgaard was married to art director Tony Curtis. She left acting in 1972, went to live in the U.S. and had a son called Sten. She became a devoted Christian and for years worked at a radio station, selling air time and refusing to discuss her acting career. She was tracked down by a Danish horror fan, Nicolas Barbano, eventually agreed to an interview (which appeared in Video Watchdog), and soon after was guest of honor at a horror convention.[citation needed]

Her image continues to decorate the covers of a great number of book and magazine publications, for instance Marcus Hearn's coffee table book Hammer Glamour (2009), which contains a chapter on her.




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