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Legendary actress who worked with Hitchcock dies aged 100 as tributes pour in

The star, who worked with the likes of Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock during her career, had to be evacuated from her home following the California wildfires

[Close up of Peggy Webber looking distressed in a poster still from Screaming Skull]

Actress Peggy Webber has died at the age of 100(Image: Getty)

Peggy Webber has died at the age of 100. The prolific actress worked with legendary directors Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock during her career, which spanned nearly seven decades.

She died on Saturday (August 15) of natural causes at an independent living facility in Napa, California, her son Rob Sinskey confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. The star, who worked across radio, film, TV and the stage, had moved there from Los Angeles after she had to be evacuated from her home during the California wildfires in January 2025.

Tributes to the star have flown in on social media. A user on Facebook wrote: "Very talented actress. R.I.P. miss Webber you will be missed." Another added: "Oh man....this makes me sad...what a class act she was."

[Close up black and white headshot of Peggy Webber]

Webber passed away on Saturday (August 15)(Image: Getty)

A third added: "The nicest individual in the business. A REAL talent and class act who will be forever in our hearts. Peggy Webber. We LOVE and miss you already."

A fourth shared: "May she rest in peace. Peggy Webber made each of her characters - be it the fraught mother of missing daughters, obnoxious booze swilling ex- wife of an ex-con, or the stressed and frustrated single parent of a hard core delinquent - unique, memorable, and integral to the success of Dragnet."

Peggy moved to Hollywood with her mother, following her father's death, and made her radio debut at just 12 years old on San Antonio station WOAI. She graduated from high school in 1942 and just four years later in 1946, Time magazine highlighted her vocal range, noting that in just three years she had voiced 150 different characters across roughly 2,500 broadcasts.

That same year she made her big screen debut in Her Adventurous Night. She caught the eye of film titan Orson Welles and he cast her as Lady Macduff in his 1948 adaptation of Macbeth.

She later recalled: "He told me, 'Now, I don't want you to do the traditional Lady Macduff. I want you to do a glamorous kind of young person. I want her to be maybe 21 or something like thatt. I did it with a Scottish accent as he wanted and he said, 'That's it. That's it.' And I got the part."

Peggy's other notable roles include Miss Dennerly in Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 noir The Wrong Man (based on true events) in which she starred opposite Henry Fonda. She also portrayed Mrs. Alice Rice in the 1952 film Submarine Command.

She took the lead female role in cult horror classic The Screaming Skull (1958), playing a newlywed who moves into a mansion where her husband's (John Hudson) first wife died under suspicious circumstances. American International Pictures promised a free burial to anyone who died of fright watching the movie.

Alongside her screen success she worked on thousands of episodes of radio shows, among them The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce; The Story of Dr. Kildare, starring Lionel Barrymore and Lew Ayres; The Man Called X, starring Herbert Marshall; and Escape, starring William Conrad.

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