Nina Foch
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Nina Foch (April 20, 1924 - December 4, 2008) was a Dutch-born American actress and leading lady in many 1940s and 1950s films.
Early life
Nina Foch was born Nina Consuela Maud Fock in Leiden on April 20, 1924. Her mother was American actress Consuela Flowerton, who returned to the U.S. after her marriage to Dutch classical music conductor Dirk Fock; they divorced when Nina was a toddler. Growing up in New York, her mother encouraged her artistic talent. She played the piano and enjoyed art, but was more interested in acting.
Career
Foch's movie fame came during the height of the 1940s when she played cool, aloof and often foreign women of sophistication. She ultimately would be featured in over 80 feature films and hundreds of television shows.
The actress was a regular in John Houseman's Playhouse 90 television series. In 1951, she appeared with Gene Kelly in the award-winning musical An American in Paris.
Foch later played Marie Antoinette in Scaramouche. Another noteworthy role came as Bithiah in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments, in which she played the Pharaoh's daughter who found the baby Moses in the bullrushes and adopted him as her son. She was actually a year younger than Charlton Heston, who played Moses.
Foch was nominated for an Academy Award for her supporting role in the 1954 boardroom drama Executive Suite, starring William Holden.
She appeared in 1960's Spartacus opposite Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier as a woman who chooses gladiators to fight to the death in the ring, simply for her entertainment.
In 1975, she appeared in the film Mahogany starring Diana Ross.
She was cast as "Eva Frazier" in the Outer Limits episode "The Borderland".
On television, she was cast as the first murder victim of the Columbo mystery series starring Peter Falk, appearing in the pilot movie, Prescription: Murder (1968), with Gene Barry as her husband, a homicidal psychiatrist.
More recently, she appeared on the television series Just Shoot Me, Bull and NCIS.
Nina Foch taught "Directing the Actor" classes at the USC School of Cinematic Arts (literally until the day of her death), classes she had taught since the 1960s. She also worked as an independent script-breakdown consultant for many prominent Hollywood directors. She lived in Beverly Hills, California, for forty years, and had one child, a son, Dr. Dirk de Brito.
Foch's first husband was James Lipton of Inside the Actor's Studio fame.
She died on December 4th, 2008, of unknown causes.
Selected filmography
- Cry of the Werewolf (1944)
- The Return of the Vampire (1944)
- I Love a Mystery (1945)
- My Name is Julia Ross (1945)
- The Guilt of Janet Ames (1947)
- The Dark Past (1948)
- Johnny Allegro (1949)
- An American in Paris (1951)
- Executive Suite (1954)
- The Ten Commandments (1956)
- Cash McCall (1960)
- Spartacus (1960)
- Mahogany ( 1975)
- Hush (1998)
- How to Deal (2003)
