All mimsy were the borogoves
Mimsy Farmer was born in Chicago, Illinois on February 28th, 1945. Her first film role came when she was just sixteen years old after a press agent spotted her and convinced her to be in pictures. In an uncredited performance, she had one line as the "lobby girl" in the 1960's beach movie Gidgit Goes Hawaiian (1961).
For the rest of the '60s Mimsy starred in sleazy, American exploitation biker flicks such as Hot Rods to Hell in 1967 with Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain, Riot on Sunset Strip (1967) and Daniel Holler's Devil's Angels (1967) and The Wild Racers (1968). I like sleazy.
She essentially started her film career with these exploitation films, and exploitation is where she stayed - at least for the next decade and a half. She would eventually branch out from biker films into other exploitation subgenres like horror, poliziotteschi and giallo before finally finishing her acting career with appearances in crappy French television shows. I'll get to that in a bit.
After the release of More she went to Italy for a vacation where she met screenwriter Vincenzo Cerami who had been writing a part for her in a movie, and they fell in love. Because of her new relationship, her growing poularity in Italy and her disillusionment with America's social policies and involvement in the Vietnam War, Mimsy decided to stay in Europe. She packed up and moved to Rome to begin a new European phase of her film career which would last for nearly two decades.
In 1973 she starred in Francesco Barilli's surreal The Perfume of the Lady in Black as a traumatized industrial scientist, which is possibly her greatest performance. Then in 1975 she put in another tour de force performance as a foresic pathologist in Armondo Crispino's Autopsy . Mimsy's proudest role however came in 1980 when she worked with accomplished British actor Patrick Magee in one of his last films, Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat .
In the mid 1980s the Italian film industry was beginning to slow from the hectic pace and success of the 1970s, and work for Mimsy also declined. By 1986, with the demise of the Euro-cult and exploitation market she started taking roles in films that were... less than stellar, including the slasher Body Count (1986) and the short film Her Fragrant Emulsion (1987). Also in 1986 her marriage to Vincenzo Cerami fell apart and the two divorced that year. She and Aisha moved to France where Mimsy continued to do some work on French television. Mimsy Farmer's last film role was in the French made for television movie Safari (1991), after which she decided to end her acting career and move on to a new phase in her life.
She married her second husband, French sculptor Francis Poirier in 1989 and they now live in Paris where Mimsy spends her time sculpting, painting and participating in the occasional theatre production.
