Cast and Characters (Dressed to Kill) Dressed to Kill

Principal Cast

Kate Miller — Angie Dickinson

A sexually frustrated Manhattan housewife seeing psychiatrist Dr. Robert Elliott for problems in her marriage, Kate fantasizes about other men during her husband's perfunctory lovemakingb1 b2 and asks Elliott whether he finds her attractive.b4 At the Metropolitan Museum of Art she plays a prolonged seduction game with a stranger, wordless and deliberate, then leaves with him for the afternoon.b5 b6 b7 Returning to retrieve her forgotten wedding ring, she is slashed to death in the building's elevator by a tall blonde woman wielding a straight razor.b8 b9 Kate functions as the film's protagonist for its first act. Her murder at the thirty-minute mark transforms Dressed to Kill from character study into thriller, the structural pivot on which the entire narrative turns.

Dr. Robert Elliott — Michael Caine

A Manhattan psychiatrist treating Kate Miller, Elliott presents as composed and professional, deflecting her sexual advances with gentle firmness: "I love my wife and sleeping with you isn't worth jeopardizing my marriage."1b4 After Kate's murder he cooperates minimally with Detective Marino, citing patient confidentiality.b14 Threatening answering-machine messages arrive from a patient named "Bobbi," who claims to have stolen his razor: "I'm so unhappy... I'm a girl inside this man's body and you're not helping me to get out."2b11 Elliott is revealed to be Bobbi, a transsexual alter ego emerging whenever he becomes sexually aroused by a woman. Bobbi kills to suppress the masculine desire that threatens her identity, the arousal itself triggering the personality shift.b33 b34

Liz Blake — Nancy Allen

A high-class call girl who witnesses Kate's murder when the elevator doors open on a blood-soaked scene.b10 Detective Marino treats her as suspect rather than witness, leveraging her prostitution record: "Let's face it: You're a whore... a Park Avenue whore, but you're still a whore."3b13 Marked as Bobbi's next target because she can identify the killer, Liz teams up with Peter Miller to investigate, her street intelligence complementing his technical skills.b23 She inherits the narrative from Kate at the act break, becoming the film's second protagonist and carrying it through Acts II and III.

Peter Miller — Keith Gordon

Kate Miller's teenage son, a tech-savvy inventor building a binary computer for a science championship.b3 Peter's grief over his mother's death drives him to investigate when the police prove inadequate, his ingenuity filling the gap their procedures leave open. He sets up a time-lapse camera outside Dr. Robert Elliott's office to photograph patientsb26 and sprays homemade mace to save Liz Blake from the blonde attacker on the subway.b22 At the precinct he tells Elliott: "My Mom wouldn't be dead if I had come with her."4b12 That guilt, fused with his resourcefulness, makes Peter the emotional conscience of the film's second half and its investigative engine.

Detective Marino — Dennis Franz

The investigating detective from the 13th Precinct, blunt and crude yet sharper than he initially appears.b13 He pressures Liz Blake by calling her a suspect and threatening to book her, even as he recognizes that the killer is likely one of Elliott's patients.b14 He maneuvers Liz into breaking into Elliott's office by suggesting that "a paranoid murder suspect" might search for evidence to defend her case, obtaining what he needs without a warrant.b24 Marino assigns undercover officer Betty Luce to tail Liz, a calculated move that ultimately delivers the killer's capture.b20 b33 b35

Dr. Levy — David Margulies

A psychiatrist consulted by Dr. Robert Elliott about the patient Bobbi.b25 In the film's expository climax Levy explains the transsexual diagnosis: Elliott and Bobbi were "opposite sexes inhabiting the same body,"5 and "when Elliott got turned on, Bobbi took over... trying to kill anyone that made Elliott masculine sexual."6b34 After Elliott's confession, Levy called Detective Marino, his phone call triggering the trap that leads to Elliott's capture.7

Supporting Cast

Actor Role
Betty Luce Nurse / Undercover officer Betty Luce
Susannah Clemm Betty Luce (the blonde undercover cop)

Footnotes

  1. "I love my wife and sleeping with you isn't worth jeopardizing my marriage." [0:12:29] ↩

  2. "Oh, Doctor, I'm so unhappy. I'm a girl inside this man's body and you're not helping me to get out." [0:37:55] ↩

  3. "Let's face it: You're a whore. A Park Avenue whore, but you're still a whore." [0:49:07] ↩

  4. "My mom wouldn't be dead if I had come with her." [0:41:03] ↩

  5. "Opposite sexes inhabiting the same body." [1:29:27] ↩

  6. "You mean when Elliott got turned on..." (Marino paraphrasing Levy's diagnosis) [1:29:48] ↩

  7. NEEDS CITATION — flagged by /cite-to-backbeats on 2026-05-09. Beat 33 attributes the rescue to Marino's standing surveillance via Betty Luce since beat 20, not to a phone call from Levy after Elliott's beat-25 visit. The "Levy called Marino" mechanism is not asserted in the backbeats and is not visible in the in-vault subtitle file; consider deletion or revision. ↩