Barbara Bain turns 95 on September 13, and she holds a rare piece of television history.
The actress best known as Cinnamon Carter on Mission: Impossible is now one of two last surviving original cast members of the legendary CBS spy series, along with Peter Lupus, 94, who played Willy Armitage.
The original IMF team has become increasingly small over the years. Martin Landau, who played master of disguise Rollin Hand and was married to Bain from 1957 to 1993, died in 2017 at age 89. Greg Morris, who played electronics genius Barney Collier, died in 1996 at 62. Peter Graves, who took over as Jim Phelps in season 2, died in 2010 at 83. Steven Hill, the original team leader Dan Briggs, died in 2016 at 94.
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A few familiar faces from later seasons are still with us—including Sam Elliott and Lesley Ann Warren—but they were not part of the original 1966 cast.
Bain was born Mildred Fogel on September 13, 1931 in Chicago. She graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in sociology before moving to New York to study dance with Martha Graham. She shifted to acting, studying under Curt Conway, Lonny Chapman and Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.
From 1966 to 1969, she starred as Cinnamon Carter, the fashion model-actress turned IMF agent, alongside Landau. The role earned her three consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1967, 1968 and 1969, plus a Golden Globe nomination in 1968.
Bain has said creator Bruce Geller wrote the role for her after watching her in acting class, she revealed in a 2019 interview with Classic Film & TV Cafe.
“Bruce Geller was a writer who had been brought out from New York. Martin wanted writers to see the actor’s process. Bruce was quite captivated with watching us, so he wrote the part of Rollin Hand—the man of a thousand roles—for Martin,” Bain recalled. “When he got to the part of ‘the girl,’ as Cinnamon was then known, he wrote it for me—although he wasn’t clear about that in the beginning. He had to deal with the network and various folks because I was an unknown actress.”
She added, “I had to keep going in for auditions until the last person who needed to see me was Lucille Ball (who ran Desilu Productions), which, of course, was terrifying at the time. I walked in and she took one look at me. ‘Looks okay to me,’ she said in her very deep voice. And there I was on the show.”
She also spoke about what Cinnamon meant to viewers at a time when there were few women like her on TV.
“There wasn’t a woman in that regard on television at the time. Young women were writing to me and saying: ‘I never thought of becoming a so-and-so, but because of watching you on Mission: Impossible, I’m going to get my degree,’” she told the site. “I just received a letter from a woman who has retired from NASA and said that she was inspired to pursue her dream because of watching me on Mission: Impossible.”
Bain and Landau both left Mission: Impossible after season 3. Bain has said it was never about money, but about a contract dispute after new producers wanted to cut the shooting schedule and push Geller out.
After Mission, Bain starred opposite Landau again as Dr. Helena Russell on the British-Italian sci-fi series Space: 1999 from 1975 to 1977. Her other credits include My So-Called Life, Walker, Texas Ranger, CSI and the films Panic (2000) and Sofia Coppola’s On the Rocks (2020).
On April 28, 2016, she was honored with the 2,579th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6767 Hollywood Boulevard, with lifelong friends Edward Asner and Dick Van Dyke on hand for the unveiling.
She and Landau had two daughters, film producer Susan Landau Finch and actress Juliet Landau.