Ann Robinson, the famous redhead who fled Martian invaders alongside Gene Barry in the Oscar-winning 1953 film “War of the Worlds,” has died at her Los Angeles home on September 26, 2025. She was 96. Her granddaughter, Tori Bravo, confirmed the news to The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday, May 17, 2026 — more than seven months after her passing. It remains unclear why her death went unreported for nearly eight months.
Robinson became a science-fiction icon playing Sylvia Van Buren, a library science teacher caught in an apocalyptic alien invasion in the film adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel. The 1953 production won an Academy Award for Best Special Effects and became a touchstone of mid-century science fiction — a role that would define her career for decades to come.
She embraced the association with humor. In one interview, Robinson quipped, “I’ve gotten more mileage out of War of the Worlds than Vivien Leigh did on Gone With the Wind.”
From Stunt Rider to Leading Lady
Before she ran from death rays, Robinson rode horses. She began her career as a Hollywood stunt woman and stunt rider, breaking into professional acting with her appearance in the 1950 film “Frenchie.” A string of Westerns followed, including 1951’s “The Cimarron Kid,” before the role of Sylvia Van Buren transformed her trajectory.
Throughout her career, Robinson returned to versions of the Sylvia Van Buren character. She appeared in the 1988 cult oddity “Midnight Movie Massacre,” in “The Naked Monster,” and across three episodes of the “War of the Worlds” television series that aired in the late 1980s. Few actors have so thoroughly intertwined themselves with a single role over so many decades.
A Reunion With Spielberg and Cruise
Steven Spielberg recruited Robinson and Gene Barry to appear in his big-budget 2005 adaptation starring Tom Cruise. Robinson appeared in a cameo as the grandmother of a family seeking shelter — a wink to longtime fans and a tribute from a director who had grown up on the 1953 picture.
Robinson later recalled meeting Spielberg on set with obvious delight, describing him as “so adorable” and recounting how he crouched behind her, placed three fingers on her left shoulder, and requested someone photograph the moment. “War of the Worlds” was one of his favorite films growing up, she noted.
A Career Beyond the Martians
Though “War of the Worlds” eclipsed everything else on her résumé, Robinson worked steadily across film and television for decades. In 1954, she appeared opposite Jack Webb and Ben Alexander in the feature-film adaptation of “Dragnet,” a role that traded on her ability to hold her own in tightly wound, dialogue-heavy scenes.
Television became fertile ground. Robinson turned up in “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Perry Mason,” “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp,” “Days of Our Lives,” and “General Hospital,” moving easily between suspense, soap, and Western — the latter a fitting return to the genre that had launched her.
Robinson married Jaime Bravo in 1957, and the couple had two sons before divorcing in 1967. She married Joseph Valdez in 1987; that marriage ended in divorce in 2017.
A Quiet Departure
The unusual delay between Robinson’s death and the public announcement has not been explained. For a performer whose face was familiar to generations of science-fiction fans — and whose career stretched from postwar Westerns to a Spielberg blockbuster — the silence is striking.
Robinson never quite escaped Sylvia Van Buren, and she didn’t seem to want to. She joked about being typecast and embraced the fan conventions and retrospectives that came with being part of a film that helped define a genre. In an industry that often discards its veterans, she remained accessible and unmistakable: the redhead from the 1953 picture, still iconic more than 70 years later.
She is survived by her family, including the two sons she shared with Jaime Bravo, and her granddaughter, Tori Bravo.