LOS ANGELES, Oct 4: Actress Janet Leigh, whose dozens of starring roles were eclipsed by a single movie moment - the motel shower stabbing scene in Alfred Hitch cock's "Psycho", has died at the age of 77.

Janet Leigh "died peacefully in her home on Sunday afternoon" in Beverly Hills. Husband Robert Brandt and her actress daughters, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis, were at her side, a spokeswoman said. Leigh's film career started in 1947 after actress Norma Shearer discovered her photograph on a hotel reception desk and recommended her for an MGM studio contract.

She appeared opposite such stars as Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn, Frank Sinatra, Charlton Heston, James Stewart and ex-husband Tony Curtis in dozens of movies including at least two classics, "The Manchurian Candidate" in 1962, and Orson Welles's "Touch of Evil" in 1958.

But lasting film fame came not from the love interest or damsel in distress roles that the blond actress specialized in in more than 50 movies but from a film in which she played a thief on the run.

The camera only cares about Leigh for the first 45 minutes of Alfred Hitch cock's 1960 film "Psycho" as she plays office worker and embezzler Marion Crane who stops for the night at the Bates Motel where in minutes she is slashed to death in a shower by a man dressed up as his mother - Anthony Perkins playing motel keeper Norman Bates.

Leigh spent a week filming the shower scene which is built of 70 takes lasting only seconds each in which the killer's knife is not shown cutting her. The scene, which lasts only minutes, was voted the most famous movie death scene by readers of the British magazine Total Films.

TRAUMA: Leigh was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for the role and for years maintained that the trauma of seeing it made it impossible for her to take a shower without fear.