Leopoldine Konstantin


Leopoldine Konstantin was an Austrian actress. She played in Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, A Winter's Tale, and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Early life

Leopoldine Konstantin was born as Leopoldine Eugenie Amelie Konstanti on 12 March 1886 in Moravia, Austria-Hungary. She made her debut in the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1907. From 1911 she was to be found at the Kammerspiele 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.

Career

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.
From 1933 she returned to film work, and in 1935 she returned to Austria. In that same year 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.

Personal life

Konstantin took acting lessons with Alexander Strakosch, whom she married shortly afterwards in 1906. They divorced in 1924. In the same year, she married Hungarian counsellor and author Géza Herczeg, and had a son, Alexander. They divorced in 1938.

Later years and death

She performed in two television series in 1948 and returned to Vienna. Her last acting work involved sporadic theatre roles and poetry readings on the radio. She died on 14 December 1965 in Hietzing, Vienna, Austria at the age of 79.

Filmography