Stella Stevens, star of 'The Nutty Professor,' dies at 84

Actress

, who starred in several comedies between the 1960s and 1970s - although she is best known for her role in

- has died at the age of 84.

Stevens' estate has reported that the actress died this Friday in Los Angeles after a long illness.

Born in Yazoo City,

, in 1938, she married at 16 and gave birth to her first and only child, actor-producer

, in 1955, when she was 17.

She divorced two years later.

She began acting and modeling while at Memphis State University and made her film debut with a supporting role in the Bing Crosby musical 'Say One for Me' in 1959, but she considered 'Li'l Abner' her big break.

"Paramount's head of publicity basically made me

," Stevens told 'FilmTalk' in 2017. "He had me do a lot of posing with photographers - indoors, outdoors, here and there - being seen in different places, going to the best restaurants, meeting wonderful actors and directors...those were the golden years of Hollywood. It was a very exciting time," he added.

Soon after, she won a Golden Globe, was named Playboy's 'Playmate of the Month' and landed a contract with Paramount Pictures, which led to work on film and in 'Girls, Girls, Girls' with Elvis Presley,

role which he only accepted because he was promised a Montgomery Clift movie afterwards.

It was a "miserable" six days of shooting, according to her, due to director Norman Taurog's temperament, although she said Presley was likeable.

Clift's movie didn't go well either, at least because he didn't make it with the co-star he'd been promised.

It became 'The Song of Oblivion', by John Cassavetes, with Bobby Darrin.

"Bobby was a good actor, but as you can imagine, he wasn't Montgomery Clift," he said.

Then came

, where he starred as Lewis's student, Stella Purdy, who he has a crush on.

"Jerry Lewis had told the bosses at Paramount that he wanted to cast the most beautiful actress in the studio, or something like that, and they gave me the part," he explains.

"We all tried to make the characters that he had created in the script special, wonderful, unique, and if you ask me, I think that's why the movie is still relevant after so many years."

At Columbia Pictures, she would appear in "The Secret to My Success," "The Silencers," with Dean Martin, and "Where There's Imps, There's Imps," as a nun opposite Rosalind Russell.

Other notable roles include 'Slaughter,' with Jim Brown, Sam Peckinpah's made-for-TV movie 'The Ballad of Cable Hogue,' and 'The Poseidon Adventure,' in which she played Linda Rogo, the wife of Ernest Borgnine's character. .

Stevens also

in the '70s and '80s, appearing in the 'Wonder Woman' pilots, 'Hart to Hart' and 'Vacation at Sea' and in series like 'Night Court', 'Murder She Wrote' and 'Magnum, P.I.'.

In 2017, he said that the favorite director he had worked with was Vincent Minnelli in 'The Courtship of Eddie's Father', from 1963. He also directed several films, the documentary 'An American Heroine', which never got distribution, and 'The Ranch ".

He retired in 2010.

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