Actress Natalie Trundy, best known for her appearances in four of the five original Planet of the Apes movies, passed away on December 5, 2019. Her daughter, Alessandra Sabato, confirmed her passing citing natural causes. She was 79 years old. 

Born in Boston in 1940, Trundy’s family later relocated to New York City where she attended Marymount School of New York. She made several television appearances before making her Broadway debut at just 12 years old in 1953’s A Girl Can Tell. Trundy went on to appear in The Montecarlo Story opposite Marlene Dietrich and Vittorio De Sica and Girls of Summer on Broadway with Shelley Winters. She later appeared in Arthur Hiller’s first directorial outing The Careless Years and Jimmy Stewart’s Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation.

Trundy also made television appearances on such shows as Climax!, Thriller, Bonanza, The Twilight Zone, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Silent Force, Wagon Train, and Quincy, M.E. Then newly married to Arthur P. Jacobs – who produced the original Planet of the Apes movie through his APJAC Productions – Trundy was cast as the telepathic mutant Albina for Beneath the Planet of the Apes. She went on to appear as the human doctor Stephanie Branton for Escape from the Planet of the Apes and portrayed the chimpanzee Liza, who eventually marries Caesar, in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Trundy’s final film was 1974’s Huckleberry Finn, also produced by APJAC Productions.

Following Jacobs death, Trundy married Gucci executive Carmine Roberto Foggia with whom she had two children. She later had a short marriage to Scott Cristle in the early 1980s and married Andres Lopez in 1985.