Celia Lovsky (born Cäcilia Josefina Lvovský, February 21, 1897 – October 12, 1979) was an Austrian-American actress. On the original Star Trek she played the Vulcan matriarch T'Pau, and on The Twilight Zone she played the aged daughter of an eternally youthful Hollywood actress.
Early years
Lovsky was born in Vienna, daughter of Břetislav Lvovský, a minor Czech opera composer, and his wife Vallee, a cellist. She studied theater, dance, and languages at the Austrian Royal Academy of Arts and Music, where she "was educated specifically for the stage".
Career
Lovsky moved to Berlin, where she acted in the surrealist plays Dream Theater and Dream Play by Karl Kraus. She was in a production of William Shakespeare's Othello near Vienna. Lovsky was instrumental in bringing Peter Lorre to the attention of Fritz Lang, leading eventually to Lorre's appearance in the film M (1931) directed by Lang.
After her divorce, Lovsky started taking roles in American movies and television. She made a name for herself playing roles including 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 was 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).
Personal life and death
Lovsky married journalist Heinrich Vinzenz Nowak in 1919. By 1925, they were apparently estranged and she was romantically involved with playwright Arthur Schnitzler. She met and married Peter Lorre in 1934 in London and divorced in 1940 or in 1944. 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.
On October 12, 1979, Lovsky died at her home in Los Angeles, aged 82.