Saturday Scream Queen: Maryam d'Abo

Maryam d'Abo is one of the many actresses with a long career behind her, but for whom full-fledged stardom has been elusive. With more than 40 television shows and movies to her name, made over three busy decades, hers is still a face that all but the biggest fans of horror films and thrillers from the 1980s and 1990s will have a hard time placing.

A European actress (born in London, but raised in Paris and Geneva by parents who were of Dutch and Croatian extraction), d'Abo got her start playing the ill-fated, over-sexed babysitter in the goopy sci-fi horror flick "Xtro," and her wide ranging and varied resume sports numerous genre flicks and television shows throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including a lead role on the short-lived series "Something Is Out There," and starring turns in horror films like "Night Life", "Immortal Sins", "Stalked", and "Double Obsession".

D'Abo is, however, perhaps best known for playing Kara, the Russian cello-playing Russian spy in the James Bond flick "The Living Daylights". She used that connection for a flirtation with writing and producing that brought the 2002 documentary film "Bond Girls Are Forever", which explores the connotations of being a Bond Girl and the impact it has on actresses' careers, into being. She has since returned to acting full-time, and in recent years has appeared in horror films "Trespassing" (2004) and "Dorian Gray" (2009).