| Kirsten Lindholm | |
| Birth Name: | Kirsten Lindholm Andreassen |
| Birth Date: | 1 September 1943 |
| Birth Place: | Odense, Denmark |
| Yearsactive: | 1969–1971 (as actress) |
| Spouse: | Vic Briggs (m.?; died 2021)[1] |
Kirsten Lindholm (born Kirsten Lindholm Andreassen; 1 September 1943) is a former model and a film actress known for her roles in Hammer horror movies, in which she first appeared as Kirsten Betts. She is now a yoga instructor and performer currently living in New Zealand and is now known as Elandra Kirsten Meredith and by the Sikh religious name Vikram Kaur Khalsa (Panjabi; Punjabi: ਵਿਕਰਮ ਕੌਰ ਖਾਲਸਾ).
She was born in Odense, Denmark,[2] and was raised in New Zealand, where she won prizes for ballroom dancing. While majoring in languages at Auckland University, she acted in several plays.[3]
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, as Kirsten Betts and then Kirsten Lindholm, she was an actress and model. She appeared in a London play called Pyjama Tops (1969),[4] in the movie Zeta One (1969),[5] and then in four Hammer horror movies: The Vampire Lovers (1970),[6] [7] in which her character is beheaded before the opening titles and during filming for which she appeared as one of a "[v]ampire quintet" on the cover of ABC Film Review,[8] Crescendo (1970),[9] Twins of Evil (1971),[10] where her role has been cited as an example of psychological violence,[11] and Lust for a Vampire (1971).[2] [12] [13]
At a yoga class in England, she met Vic Briggs, who had converted to Sikhism and taken the name Vikram Singh; they fell in love and married after moving to California, and she took the Sikh religious name Vikram Kaur Khalsa.[14] [15] [16] They ran a Sikh ashram in San Diego.[14] After living in Hawaii, where she worked as a healing practitioner[14] and founded Ho'omana Ke Laka Healing workshops,[2] [3] she and her husband moved in 2008 to the Hibiscus Coast, New Zealand, where they both taught yoga.[17] She also sang backup for her husband on his One in the Goddess album.[3] Briggs died in 2021.[1]