Suzanne Pleshette built an entire career falling foul of animals in movies. She was overshadowed by dogs in the Disney live-action movies The Ugly Dachshund (1966) and The Shaggy DA (1976). She died from a snake bite in the western Nevada Smith (1966) and most famously she was pecked to death in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963).

Pleshette played Annie Hayworth, the Bodega Bay schoolteacher and part of an odd romantic triangle in Hitchcock's classic thriller. Her character was the ex-girlfriend of Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) and new best friend of Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), who fancies she can to better with Mitch than Annie had done.

In the US Pleshette was at least as well known for playing the wife on The Bob Newhart Show (1972-77).

Born in New York City, in 1937, Pleshette was the daughter of a theatre manager and a dancer. She attended the famous High School of Performing Arts, New York, and by the late 1950s was working regularly in theatre, film and television. In 1961 she replaced Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker on Broadway. The following year she appeared with heart-throb Troy Donahue in the romantic drama Rome Adventure.

By the time she appeared in The Birds she had also been in a string of hit television shows, including Alfred Hitchcock's own show. In The Birds she presented a dark-haired, rather worldly contrast to Hedren's typical blonde Hitchcock ice-maiden, the sort of contrast that has provided the stuff of many student essays.

In 1964 Pleshette married Donahue and they co-starred in the Raoul Walsh western A Distant Trumper (1964), with Donahue as an officer fresh out of West Point and Pleshette as the commanding officer's wife, to whom he finds himself attracted. They seemed far too modern for the roles they were playing, though their on-screen relationship lasted longer than their real-life marriage, which lasted just eight months.

Pleshette would marry twice more. In 1968 she married Tom Gallagher, a wealthy businessman, and retired from acting for a while. Gallagher died in 2000 and the following year she married actor Tom Poston when she was 64 and he was 79. He died in April last year.

Other films include The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin (1967), Blackbeard's Ghost (1968) and Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971). More recently she appeared in several episodes of the sitcoms 8 Simple Rules (2003) and Will and Grace (2002-04).

Suzanne Pleshette, actress, was born on January 31, 1937. She died of respiratory failure on January 19, 2008, aged 70