Polish actress
She continued her career on stage and in movies in the 20s.
She also began her film career in Italy and she impersonated numerous roles during the 10s in movies like "Il sogno di un tramonto dautunno" (1911), "Romanticismo" and "Centocelle" (1919).
When her family moved to Warsaw she was able to gain a foothold on stage there and she impersonated smaller roles at the beginning. Finally she went to Italy at the age of 19 where she became established as a stage actress in Milan, among others also as an opera singer in "Un ballo in maschera" (1914).
The actress Helena Makowska was born as Elena Woyniewicz in the Russian Kriwoi Rog.
She got arrested by the Gestapo in November 1939 and she remained in imprisonment till 1943.
Thanks to an exchange of prisoners she was released in April 1943 whereupon she emigrated to England. There she was able to continue her stage career and after World War II her tours led her to Germany, Belgium and France.
She went to Germany in 1922 where she also got regular engagement in German silent movies.
She settled down in Italy in 1947 and after more than 20 years she acted again in front of the camera for the movie "Fabiola" (49). With "Quo Vadis?" (51), "The Barefoot Contessa" (54), and "Arrivederci Firenze" (58) followed her last cinematical works.
When she had to leave Germany because of her Polish citizenship - a reaction of Germany against the "Optanten" politics in Poland - she continued her career in Italy and Poland, primarily at the theater. Beside it she only appeared in few movies like "Czerwony blazen" (1926) und "Kochanka Szamoty".
From 1927 on she exclusively appeared on stage and occasionally in operas like "Carmen" (1932) but her career was interrupted by the invasion of Germany in Poland.
In 1939, immediately after the Germans occupied Poland, she was arrested as a British citizen and in 1940 she was deported to Berlin. After four years of prison camp, she was liberated in occasion of an exchange of prisoners. In England she joined the theater ensemble of the Polish army, where she performed until the end of the war.
After her return from Germany to Italy, rumors started to circulate that she had an affair with crown prince Umberto.
She was the daughter of Ludwik Woyniewicz, a Polish engineer who worked for a Russian-Belgian company, and his wife Stanislawa ne Sauret.
At the age of 16, she married lawyer Julian Makowski, but the marriage was a brief intermezzo.
In 1999 director Peter Delpeut included footage of Makowska, Lyda Borelli, Pina Menichelli and other Italian silent film stars in his compilation film Diva Dolorosa.
In 1912 Makowska went to Milan to take singing lessons. The following year she debuted at the Opera as Amelia in Il ballo in maschera and as Elena in Mefistofele.
The Italian press constantly praised her beauty but found her a bit stiff. From 1917 on, she switched to other film companies and played Ophelia in Ruggero Ruggeris Amleto/Hamlet , the seductress Elena in the comedy Addio giovinezza/Good-bye Youth (1918, Augusto Genina) with Maria Jacobini, followed by La dame en gris/The Lady in Grey (1919, Gian Paolo Rosmino).
In the early 1920s, Helena Makowska moved to Berlin, where she remarried with actor Karl Falkenberg. Between 1922 and 1927 Makowska played in some 15 films in Berlin and also in 3 in Warsaw.
In the early 1930s she married for the third time, now with an Englishman, Botteril, and returned to Poland, as an opera and operetta singer.
Sister of actress Urszula Modrzynska.
