Sandra D.

During her modeling career, Dee attempted to lose weight to "be as skinny as the high-fashion models", although an improper diet "ruined [her] skin, hair, nails—everything". Having slimmed down, her body was unable to digest any food she ate, and it took the help of a doctor to regain her health. According to the actress, she "could have killed [herself]" and "had to learn to eat all over again". In spite of the damaging effects on her health, Dee earned a generous $75,000 in 1956 ($705,000 today) working as a child model in New York, which she used to support herself and her mother after the death of her stepfather. According to sources, Dee's large modeling salary was more than she would later come to earn as an actress.

Look at this––[a] cigarette. I like to smoke. I'm 25 years old, and it so happens that I like to smoke. So out in Hollywood the studio press agents are still pulling cigarettes out of my hand and covering my drink with a napkin whenever my picture is taken. Little Sandra Dee isn't supposed to smoke, you know. Or drink. Or breathe.

Complications from kidney disease led to Dee's death on February 20, 2005, at the Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, California at the age of 62. She was interred in a crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, California.

Dee's later years were marked by poor health, and she became a self-described recluse after retiring from acting. She battled anorexia nervosa, depression, and alcoholism for many years. She quit drinking altogether after being diagnosed with kidney failure in 2000, attributed to years of heavy drinking and smoking.

In 1994, Dodd Darin published a book about his parents, Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, in which he chronicled his mother's anorexia, drug and alcohol problems, and that she had been sexually abused as a child by her stepfather, Eugene Douvan. The same year, Dee had her final acting credit—a voice only appearance—on an episode of Frasier.

Dee is referenced in the title of "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee", a song from the 1971 musical Grease and its 1978 film adaptation.

Throughout the 1970s, Dee took roles sporadically on episodes of several television series, appearing in Night Gallery, Fantasy Island, and Police Woman. Her final film performance was in the low-budget drama Lost (1983). In her later years, Dee told a Newark, New Jersey newspaper that she "felt like a has-been that never was."

She made a comedy at MGM, Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding! (1967) which was a mild success. Ross Hunter asked her to come back to Universal in a co-starring role in Rosie! (1967). The film was not a success. Dee was inactive in the film industry for a few years before appearing in the 1970 American International Pictures occult horror film The Dunwich Horror—a loose adaptation of an H. P. Lovecraft story—as a college student who finds herself in the center of an occult ritual plot. "The reason I decided to do Dunwich was because I couldn't put the script down once I started reading it," Dee commented. "I had read so many that I had to plow through, just because I promised someone. Even if this movie turns out be a complete disaster, I guarantee it will change my image." However, Dee refused to be nude in the film's final sequence, which was written in the screenplay.

In 1961, Dee still had three years on her Universal contract. She signed a new one for seven years. The newlyweds Dee and Darin appeared together in the Hunter romantic comedy If a Man Answers (1962). She appeared in the final "Tammy" film, Tammy and the Doctor (1963). She had another big hit in the comedy Take Her, She's Mine (1963), playing a character loosely based on Nora Ephron. That year, she was voted the 8th biggest star in the country; it would be her last appearance in the top ten. I'd Rather Be Rich (1964) was a musical remake of It Started with Eve, once again for producer Ross Hunter. She was reunited with Darin in That Funny Feeling (1965), then appeared in her last film at Universal under her contract with the spy comedy, A Man Could Get Killed (1966). Dee was also a singer and recorded some singles in the early 1960s including a cover version of 'When I Fall In Love'.

By the late 1960s, her career had started to decline, and a highly publicized marriage to Bobby Darin (m. 1960–1967) ended in divorce. The year of her divorce, Dee's contract with Universal Pictures was dropped. She attempted a comeback with the 1970 independent horror film The Dunwich Horror, but rarely acted after this time, appearing only occasionally in television productions throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Dee's final years were marred by illness, and she died in 2005 of complications from kidney disease, brought on by a lifelong struggle with anorexia nervosa.

Producer Ross Hunter claimed to have discovered Dee on Park Avenue in New York City with her mother when she was twelve years old. In a 1959 interview, Dee recalled that she "grew up fast", surrounded mostly by older people, and was "never held back in anything [she] wanted to do".

MGM cast her as the female lead in The Reluctant Debutante (1958), with John Saxon as her romantic co-star. It was the first of several films they made together. She provided the voice for The Snow Queen (1957). Despite or because of her newfound success, and the effects of sexual abuse, Dee continued to struggle with anorexia nervosa, which led to her kidneys temporarily shutting down.

Ending her modeling career, Dee moved from New York to Hollywood in 1957. After studying at the Hollywood Professional School, she graduated from University High School in Los Angeles in June 1958. Dee's onscreen debut was in the 1957 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) film Until They Sail, directed by Robert Wise. To promote the film, Dee appeared in a December issue of Modern Screen in a column by Louella Parsons, who praised the young girl and compared her looks and talent to those of Shirley Temple. Her performance made her one of that year's winners of the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress.

Sandra Dee (born Alexandra Zuck; April 23, 1942 – February 20, 2005) was an American actress. Dee began her career as a child model, working first in commercials, and then film in her teenage years. Best known for her portrayal of ingénues, Dee earned a Golden Globe Award as one of the year's most promising newcomers for her performance in Robert Wise's Until They Sail (1958). She became a teenage star for her subsequent performances in Imitation of Life and Gidget (both 1959), which made her a household name.