Celia Lovsky (born Cäcilia Josefina Lvovsky, February 21, 1897 – October 12, 1979) was an Austrian-American actress. She is best known to fans of Star Trek as the Vulcan matriarch T'Pau, and to fans of The Twilight Zone as the aged daughter of an eternally youthful Hollywood actress.
Early years
Lovsky was born in Vienna,[1] daughter of Břetislav Lvovsky, a minor Czech opera composer[a] and his wife, Vallee, a cellist.[2] She studied theater, dance, and languages at the Austrian Royal Academy of Arts and Music.[3]: 32
Life and career
Lovsky married journalist Heinrich Vinzenz Nowak in 1919.[3]: 496 By 1925, they were apparently estranged and she was romantically involved with playwright Arthur Schnitzler.[3]: 32 She later moved to Berlin, where she acted in the surrealist plays Dream Theater and Dream Play by Karl Kraus.[3]: 39 There, in 1929, she met Peter Lorre, who had seen her in a production of Shakespeare's Othello near Vienna.[3]: 32 The couple traveled to Paris, London, and the United States. Lovsky was instrumental in bringing Lorre to the attention of Fritz Lang, leading eventually to Lorre's appearance in the film M (1931) directed by Lang.[3]: 37 They lived together for five years before their marriage.[citation needed] They married in 1934 and divorced in 1940[2] or 1944,[4] remaining close friends for the rest of Lorre's life.[citation needed]
After the couple settled in Santa Monica, California, Lorre had not wished Lovsky to work, believing he should be the breadwinner and she should remain at home. For the rest of Lorre's life, she was his publicist, manager, secretary, financial planner, nurse and confidant.[3]: 87 However, after their divorce, she started taking roles in American movies and television. She made a name for herself playing roles such as the deaf-mute mother of Lon Chaney in Man of a Thousand Faces (1957) with James Cagney and as Apache Princess Saba in the 1955 film Foxfire starring Jane Russell and Jeff Chandler.
As she grew older, she was given dowager roles, such as a Spanish matriarch in an episode of Bonanza titled "The Spanish Grant" (1960) and Have Gun Will Travel titled "The Man Who Wouldn't Talk" (1958) (with Charles Bronson), Romany matriarchs, elderly Native American women such as in the Wagon Train episode "A Man Called Horse", expatriate Russian princesses, and a role as the widowed mother of Reinhard Schwimmer, one of the victims in the film The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967). Her final movie appearance was of the "Exchange Leader" in Soylent Green (1973). She delivers the final confirmation to Edward G. Robinson's character Sol about Soylent Green's true ingredient.
One of her television appearances were in the Twilight Zone episode "Queen of the Nile" (1964), in which she played the elderly daughter of a never-aging actress (played by Ann Blyth); another was as the Vulcan matriarch T'Pau who presides at Mr. Spock's wedding in the Star Trek episode "Amok Time" (1967).
Death
On October 12, 1979, Lovsky died at her home in Los Angeles, aged 82.[4]
^The paperwork for her early 1930s application for US citizenship adjusted her surname and dropped the diacritic from her first name, resulting in Cacilia Josefina Lowenstein.[1]
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