Born in London, Mandel grew up on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent and later in Essex at Epping, Woodford and Buckhurst Hill. She was partly raised by her grandparents "who owned bars and clubs and holidays camps".[1]
Beginning at age 13, she attended London Academy of Modeling in London.[1]
Career
Early years
She began her career as a coat model but was also a catwalk model and later a photographic model.[1] Later, she modelled lingerie and was a contestant on Miss TV Times (broadcast on UK television on 14 June 1974 and presented by Hughie Green).[2][3]
In sex comedies
Mandel's acting career in British sex comedies began in 1976, with her first film, Intimate Games. Benny Hill saw Intimate Games, and this led him to cast Mandel on his eponymous show.[1] She appears in multiple roles on two 1977 episodes of the series (broadcast in the UK 26 January 1977 and 23 March 1977). Of Hill and Jackie Wright's famous "head slapping" routine, she said "Jackie Wright was a chain smoker and he would often hide his cigarette in his mouth or behind his back during scenes. In fact, you could often see a little plume of smoke rising behind him if you looked close enough. Benny would slap his head to fan the smoke away."[4]
On the big screen, she quickly became a favourite of both British sex film directors and audiences. Soon she was receiving equal billing with Mary Millington, the UK's biggest sex symbol of the 1970s. Millington and Mandel's film, Come Play With Me still stands as one of the longest-running films in British film history, and ran continuously at the Moulin Cinema in London's West End from 1977 to 1981.
She also appeared in the hardcore film Blonde Ambition (also known as Can I Come Again), which was shot in New York City in 1977, but only released in 1980. Blonde Ambition stars Mandel as Sugar Kane, half of a talentless duo of singers who become embroiled in the search for a missing brooch. Directed by the eccentric Amero Brothers, the role required Mandel to strip while ice skating, impersonate a drag queen, play the tuba and perform in hardcore sex scenes. (She used a body double for the last.)[citation needed]
Later years
Mandel eventually moved behind the scenes, working on the horror comedy Dead Men Don't Die (1991) starring Elliott Gould as well as co-producing Love Bites, starring Adam Ant, in 1993, (she appears briefly onscreen as well).[1]
In 1996, Mandel revealed in the British newspaper The People that she had quit show business to work as a nurse, caring for people dying from AIDS after several of her friends had died from the disease.[6]
For a short period of time, she ran an art gallery in Beverly Hills, California.[1] However she returned to the nursing work, until 2001, when she was "involved in a very serious accident" which caused her to retire from that work.[1]
Mandel has been married more than once.[1] On 16 August 1981, she married wealthy British film financier Stanley Margolis. Margolis had owned Tigon British Film Productions, the company that released some of her best-known British films, and that would later co-produce the 1993 film True Romance. She and Margolis divorced in 1994.
^"Ex-Hill's Angel Suzy is a real Angel of Mercy". The People. 1996. The stunning blonde, who often dressed as a saucy nurse, is now wearing a real nurse's uniform to care for dying patients.
