Koo Stark

Kathleen Norris Stark (born April 26, 1956), better known as Koo Stark, is an American photographer and actress, known for her relationship with Prince Andrew.

She is a patron of the Julia Margaret Cameron Trust, which runs the museum of the Victorian pioneer photographer.

Stark was born in New York.

Her parents were Wilbur Stark, a writer and producer, and Kathi Norris, a writer and television presenter in New York City.

She is the youngest of three children, the others being Pamela and Brad.

At the time of her birth, the family lived in Manhattan.

Her grandfather, Edwin Earl Norris, was a cabinetmaker and musician, playing horn and viola in the Newark Symphony Orchestra.

Her mother's family were Presbyterians.

After a divorce in the 1960s, her mother remarried.

Koo Stark attended the Hewitt School in New York and the Glendower Preparatory School in Kensington, London.

After training at a stage school, she began her acting career.

Her first film role was in the comedy All I Want Is You... and You... and You... (1974), produced by her father.

In 1975 she appeared in Las adolescentes (The Adolescents), opposite Anthony Andrews, and starred in an episode of Shades of Greene.

Also that year she had an uncredited role as a bridesmaid in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Her best-remembered performance is the lead role in the erotic film Emily (1976), directed by Henry Herbert, 17th Earl of Pembroke.

Uncertain whether to accept the part, Stark did so on the advice of Graham Greene, with whom she had worked the year before.

Of working with her in Emily, actor Victor Spinetti later wrote "I found Koo Stark to be an enchanting girl and terribly bright and interesting".

She also appeared in Cruel Passion (1977), a film based on the novel Justine.

Around the same time, she played the part of Camie Marstrap in Star Wars (1977); the scenes in which she appeared were cut from the film before its original release, but can be seen in Star Wars: Behind the Magic (1998).

Stark also began to work as a fashion model, particularly for Norman Parkinson.

Stark has worked as a photographer since the 1980s, and may have been the first person to turn the tables on the pursuing paparazzi by taking photos of them.

In February 1981, she was at the National Theatre as an understudy in the Edward Albee play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Prince Andrew has told how in 1983 a photographic printer, Gene Nocon, invited Stark to take photographs of people taking photos of her, for his exhibition, Personal Points of View, planned for October.

She persuaded Nocon to include Andrew's work as well.

Her early photographs led to a book deal, for which she took lessons from Norman Parkinson.

She travelled to Tobago, where he lived, and he became her mentor.

Her book Contrasts (1985) included about a hundred of her photographs.

She went on to study the work of leading photographers, including Angus McBean, whom she met and photographed, developing her interests in photography to include reportage, portraits, landscapes, still life, and other work.

The book Contrasts was launched at Hamiltons Gallery, London, in September 1985, at an exhibition of the same name.

She appeared in the comedy Eat the Rich (1987), and then featured in "Timeslides", an episode of the sci-fi show Red Dwarf (1989), playing Lady Sabrina Mulholland-Jjones, the fiancée of a more successful Dave Lister.

In September 1987, she returned to the stage, taking the part of Vera Claythorne in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None at the Duke of York's Theatre.

The London Theatre Record posed the question "Why has a girl so obviously three-dimensional chosen a part so obviously two-dimensional?"

On 22 April 1987, a charity auction at Christie's, St James's, for the Campaign to Protect Rural England, featured signed work by David Bailey, Patrick Lichfield, Don McCullin, Terence Donovan, Fay Godwin, Heather Angel, Clive Arrowsmith, Linda McCartney, Koo Stark, and fifteen others, Views by Stark, including some of Kirby Muxloe Castle, were in G. H. Davies's England's Glory (1987), a CPRE book launched at the same time.

Pictures by Stark have appeared in Country Life and other magazines.

Several of her portraits are in the National Portrait Gallery, and work is also in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, both in London.

A Leica user, Stark has said her camera transcends mere function and is a personal friend.

She played Miss Scarlett in the 1991 series of Cluedo, succeeding Toyah Willcox and befriending Rula Lenska.

In 1994, the Gallery Bar at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane hosted an exhibition called 'The Stark Image', forty photographs by Stark, including several previously unpublished.

In 1998, her work was featured at the Como Lario in Holbein Place, Belgravia.

In July 2001 she had an exhibition called 'Stark Images" at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, duplicated from June to July 2001 at Dimbola Lodge on the Isle of Wight. A solo exhibition of portraits was at the Winter Gardens, Ventnor, from September to October 2010, and another at Dimbola Lodge from February to April, 2011.