Elisabeth Bergner

Elisabeth Bergner was an Austrian-British actress. Primarily a stage actress, her career flourished in Berlin and Paris before she moved to London to work in films. She played the title role in The Rise of Catherine the Great (1934). Her signature role was Gemma Jones in Escape Me Never, a 1934 play written for her by Margaret Kennedy. She played Gemma, first in London and then in the Broadway debut, and in a 1935 film version for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also starred in the American film Paris Calling (1941). In 1943, Bergner returned to Broadway in the play The Two Mrs. Carrolls, for which she won the Distinguished Performance Medal from the Drama League.