Actress and drama teacher Nina Foch dies at 84

By BOB THOMAS
AP
LOS ANGELES (2008-Dec-04) — Nina Foch, the Dutch-born actress who often played cool, calculating women in films, theater and television and was a respected coach of aspiring actors and directors, has died. She was 84.

Foch died Friday at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center of complications from the blood disorder myelodysplasia, her son, Dr. Dirk De Brito, told the Los Angeles Times. She became ill last week while teaching at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts.

Foch had taught at the school for 40 years. In her youth, she was a concert pianist and painter before taking up acting studies at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.

After appearing in summer theater productions and touring companies, she moved to Hollywood and signed a contract with Columbia Pictures, where she made her movie debut in 1943's "Wagon Wheels West."

Although she never achieved star status, Foch became a distinguished supporting player, often as "the other woman" or figures of wealth and connivance. She was nominated for an Academy Award for supporting actress for "Executive Suite" in 1955.

Other film credits included "The Ten Commandments," "Spartacus," "Rich and Famous" and "Sliver."

On Broadway, she performed in "Tonight at 8:30," "A Second String," "Twelfth Night" and "King Lear," and on television she appeared in "Murder, She Wrote," "The Outer Limits," "Hawaii 5-0," "L.A. Law" and "Just Shoot Me." She appeared last year in an episode of "The Closer."

Foch was born on April 20, 1924, in Leyden, Netherlands, as Nina Consuelo Maud Fock. She was the daughter of conductor-composer Dirk Fock, who moved the family to New York when she was a child. Her mother, Consuelo Flowerton, became a well-known actress in New York, and Nina followed her into the theater world.

Foch said in a 1992 interview that she wanted to diversify her career by directing. She worked as an assistant to producer John Houseman and with directors George Stevens, Ron Woodward, and Randal Kleiser, but she eventually gave up that ambition in favor of teaching.

"I love them and they love me," she once said of her students. "I have one son, but I really don't. I have hundreds of children."

Foch's son is from her second marriage, to Dennis Brite. She married and divorced three times.



WIKI BIO

Nina Foch (April 20, 1924 - December 5, 2008) was an Academy Award-nominated Dutch-born American actress and leading lady in many 1940s and 1950s films.

Nina Foch was born Nina Consuela Maud Fock in Leiden. Her mother was American actress Consuelo 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 CBS Playhouse 90 television series. In 1951, she appeared with Gene Kelly in the award-winning musical An American in Paris. Foch played Marie Antoinette in Scaramouche, Bithiah in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments, in which she played the Pharaoh's sister who found the baby Moses in the bullrushes and adopted him as her son.


Foch received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her 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, classes she had taught since the 1960s up to her death. 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 married 3 times, the first to James Lipton, host of Inside the Actor's Studio. She married Dennis Brite in 1959. The couple had one child before divorcing in 1963. Her last marriage, to Michael Dewell in 1967 ended in divorce in 1993.


Nina Foch died Friday, December 5, 2008, of complications from the blood disorder myelodysplasia at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, her son, Dr. Dirk De Brito, told the Los Angeles Times. She became ill last week while teaching at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts.


Partial Filmography


Cry of the Werewolf (1944)
The Return of the Vampire (1944)
A Song to Remember (1945)
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)
Scaramouche (1952)
Executive Suite (1954)
The Ten Commandments (1956)
Cash McCall (1960)
Spartacus (1960)
Mahogany ( 1975)
Hush (1998)
How to Deal (2003)


Nina at IMDB
www.imdb.com/name/nm0001225/