Leopoldine Konstantin

Leopoldine Konstantin

Leopoldine Konstantin (12 March 1886, in Brünn, Moravia, Austria-Hungary – 14 December 1965, in Hietzing, Vienna, Austria) was an Austrian actress. She took acting lessons with Alexander Strakosch, whom she married shortly afterwards, and made her debut in the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1907. She played in Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening (1907), Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1907), A Winter's Tale (1908), and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1910). From 1911 she was to be found at the Kammerspielen in Berlin and became known in the Berlin salons. She moved to Vienna in 1916 and by 1924 she was playing the title role in Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart. Starting in 1912 she also played in silent films, initially in title roles. She turned away from this medium when, after the First World War, she was offered increasingly minor parts. In 1923 she had a house built in Westerland for herself and her son Alexander. In 1924 she married Hungarian counsellor and author Géza Herczeg. From 1933 she returned to film work, and in 1935 she returned to Austria. Divorced in 1938, she moved to the United States via Britain. She spoke no English at that time, and had to take a job as a factory worker until, after intensive language study, she landed a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's 1946 film Notorious, in which she played Claude Rains' mother, although she was only three years older than him.

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