Austrian theatre and film actress
Mother of the actresses Elisabeth Orth , Christiane Hrbiger and Maresa Hrbiger.
Laurence Olivier considered Wessely one of the greatest actresses of the twentieth century.
Bette Davis was known to have studied Wesselys film performances.
Theatre actress at the famous Burgtheater in Vienna from 1953 to 1987. She retired from acting shortly after her husbands death.
As she appeared on antisemitic propaganda movies, she was criticized later by Austrian intellectuals. Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek considered Heimkehr the worst Nazi propaganda movie of all and called Wessely "the prototype of an actress in the Third Reich".
Buried in the Grinzing cemetery in Vienna.
Her father was a butcher, her mother a dancer at the Vienna State Opera.
She was the most highly paid film star of the Nazi era.
Wessely trained for acting at the Reinhardt Seminar and made her theatrical debut in 1924 with the Vienna Deutsches Volkstheater in a play by Sudermann. Specialising in sophisticated comedy, she became a prominent actress of the stage, appearing in Prague (1926), Salzburg, Berlin and the Vienna Burgtheater. She was permanently contracted from 1929 to 1945 by the Theater in der Josefstadt. From the 1930s, she developed into a more serious actress, handling roles like Gretchen in "Faust" (1935) and Joan of Arc in "Die heilige Johanna" , a part which she was associated with for the rest of her career. Wessely was noted for her unaffected, natural manner. She became a screen actress at the height of her theatrical fame.
Ingrid Bergman considered Wessely as a role model for her own performances.
Briefly operated her own production company during the 1950s.
