Nina van Pallandt became famous in the United States in the early 1970s as the mistress of hoaxer Clifford Irving, who went to jail when his biography of Howard Hughes, allegedly written with Hughes' co-operation, proved to be a fake when Hughes himself came out of seclusion to repudiate the work. Van Pallandt helped expose Irving's fraud by revealing that he was vacationing with her in Mexico at the time he was allegedly interviewing Hughes. She appears, as herself, in Orson Welles' non-fiction film "F For Fake" (F for Fake (1973)). Van Pallandt was known in Europe as a singer of folk songs before her involvement with Irving and subsequent film career, having been married to her fellow folk singer, Baron Frederik van Pallandt, with whom she toured Europe and had many hit records as "Nina & Frederik". The height of Van Pallandt's film career was her appearance in four Robert Altman movies: The Long Goodbye (1973), A Wedding (1978), Quintet (1979), and O.C. and Stiggs (1985).