Christiane Schmidtmer was born in Switzerland but moved to Germany at a very young age. She worked in the stage in Germany from 1961-1963, then turned to photographic modelling for German nude magazines and later, Playboy. She also modelled for advertising companies, namely Max Factor cosmetics, before she started her movie career. She was the beautiful mistress of José Ferrer in Ship of Fools (1965), but most people will remember her as the evil wardress in the exploitation women-in-prison film, The Big Doll House (1971).