Luise Rainer

Luise Rainer net worth is $1.5 Million. Also know about Luise Rainer bio, salary, height, age weight, relationship and more …

Luise Rainer Wiki Biography

Luise Rainer is a retired German-born Austrian and American film actress. She was the first actor to win multiple Academy Awards and the first person to win them consecutively. She was discovered by American studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer talent scouts while acting on stage in A… IMDB Wikipedia $1.5 million 1910 2014 5 ft 4 in (1.63 m) Academy Award for Best Actress Actors Clifford Odets Clifford Odets (m. 1937–1940) December 30 Düsseldorf Film actress Francesca Knittel-Bowyer Germany January 12 Jewish people London Louise Rainer Luise Rainer Luise Rainer Net Worth Robert Knittel Robert Knittel (m. 1945–1989) The Viennese Teardrop United Kingdom

Luise Rainer Quick Info

Full Name Luise Rainer
Net Worth $1.5 Million
Date Of Birth January 12, 1910, Düsseldorf, Germany
Died December 30, 2014, London, United Kingdom
Place Of Birth Düsseldorf
Height 5 ft 4 in (1.63 m)
Profession Film actress
Nationality Germany
Spouse Robert Knittel (m. 1945–1989), Clifford Odets (m. 1937–1940)
Children Francesca Knittel-Bowyer
Parents Emilie Königsberger, Heinrich Rainer
Nicknames Louise Rainer , The Viennese Teardrop
IMDB http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0707023
Awards Academy Award for Best Actress
Movies Escapade, The Great Ziegfeld, The Good Earth, Big City, The Emperor’s Candlesticks, The Toy Wife, The Great Waltz, Dramatic School, Hostages, The Gambler, Sehnsucht 202
TV Shows MGM: When the Lion Roars

Luise Rainer Quotes

  • [on The Good Earth (1937)] I had a wonderful director, Sidney Franklin. I worked from inside out. It’s not for me, putting on a face, or putting on makeup, or making masquerade. It has to come from inside out. I knew what I wanted to do and he let me do it. Hollywood was a very strange place. To me, it was like a huge hotel with a huge door, one of those rotunda doors. On one side people went in, heads high, and very soon they came out on the other side, heads hanging.
  • My greatest regret is that I have not given out much, much more, because inside me there is much, much more that I would have liked to give. It sounds arrogant, but it is the truth: I do not feel I have given out even part of what I can give out.
  • [on the bombing of Kosovo] How can you close your eyes and say this has nothing to do with me? I’m not speaking about politics. Politics is a terrible thing. Everyone wants power.
  • [on Ascension Island in 1944] On Christmas night, I danced with all kinds of fellows with pimples and all kinds of sores. I suddenly felt, ‘What is this being shy? I have to give myself, I just felt I didn’t want to be shy, I didn’t want to draw away, but give myself, I mean, not physically, but be there. It was a great lesson also for me, this tour through Africa and Italy during the war.
  • In my day, making films was like working in a factory. You were a piece of machinery with no rights.
  • My acting was from the inside out. I don’t believe in anything artificial. I don’t believe in makeup. It has to come from you like a child you give birth to. That is how you act.
  • I’ll tell you a wonderful story. Coming with all of these ideas that I had, and still have, and still feel because I never change and still believe in the same things. Soon after I was there in Hollywood, for some reason I was at a lun­cheon with Robert Taylor sitting next to me, and I asked him, ‘Now, what are your ideas or what do you want to do,’ and his answer was that he wanted to have 10 good suits to wear, elegant suits of all kinds, that was his idea. I practically fell under the table.
  • The secret of a long life is to never trust a doctor.
  • I was never proud of anything. I just did it like everything else. To do a film – let me explain to you – it’s like having a baby. You labor, you labor, you labor, and then you have it. And then it grows up and it grows away from you. But to be proud of giving birth to a baby? Proud? No, every cow can do that.
  • I was nobody to make a pass to. I was very thin like a boy and I was very un-sexy.
  • I don’t believe in acting. I think that people in life act, but when you are on the stage, or in my case also on screen, you have to be true.
  • [on her comeback role] It’s certainly not an Academy Award part, and thank goodness, my bosses don’t expect me to win an award with it. No, this is something unspectacular but I hope, a step back in the right direction.
  • [on her comeback] All the professor and the other students cared about was whether I could answer the questions, not whether I could come to class looking glamorous. But after that brief return to the stage, I began to realize that all the doors which had been opened to me in Europe, and all the work I had been able to accomplish for refugee children, was due to the fact that people knew me from my screen work. I began to feel a sense of responsibility to a job which I had started and never finished. When I also felt, after that experience at Dennis, that perhaps I did have talent after all, and that my too-sudden stardom was not just a matter of happy accident, I decided to go back.
  • [on quitting Hollywood] I was very young. There were a lot of things I was unprepared for. I was too honest, I talked serious instead of with my eyelashes and Hollywood thought I was cuckoo. I worked in seven big pictures in three years. I have to be inspired to give a good performance. I complained to a studio executive that the source was dried up. The executive told me, ‘Why worry about the source. Let the director worry about that.’ I didn’t run away from anybody in Hollywood. I ran away from myself.
  • [on her first husband Clifford Odets] All the acting I’ve done on the stage or screen has been nothing compared to the acting I did in New York, when I tried to make everyone think I was happy – and my heart was breaking.
  • [on MGM chief Louis B. Mayer] He said, ‘That girl is a Frankenstein, she’s going to ruin our whole firm. We made you and we are going to destroy you.’ Well, he tried his best.
  • I always considered myself the world’s worst actress.
  • The Oscar is not a curse. The real curse is that once you have an Oscar they think you can do anything.
  • [2003, referring to her Academy Award win in 1937] No one in Europe had never heard of it. I didn’t know what it was, it didn’t mean anything to me.
  • [2003] It was not the thing that I strived for because, you see, today’s Academy Award is – Oh God! The thing everyone longs for.
  • [to MGM chief Louis B. Mayer when she walked out on her contract] You are now 60 and I am 20. When I am 40, the age of a successful actress, you will be dead and I will live.
  • For my second and third pictures I won Academy Awards. Nothing worse could have happened to me. When I got two Oscars, they thought ‘Oh, they can throw me into anything’. I was a machine, practically a tool in a big, big factory, and I could not do anything. And so I left. I just went away. I fled. Yes, I fled.

Luise Rainer Important Facts

  • Delivered her daughter Francesca Knittel-Bowyer via Caesarean section.
  • Is one of 11 actresses who won the Best Actress Oscar for a move that also won the Best Picture Oscar (she won for The Great Ziegfeld (1936)). The others are Claudette Colbert for It Happened One Night (1934), Vivien Leigh for Gone with the Wind (1939), Greer Garson for Mrs. Miniver (1942), Louise Fletcher for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Diane Keaton for Annie Hall (1977), Shirley MacLaine for Terms of Endearment (1983), Jessica Tandy for Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Jodie Foster for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Gwyneth Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Hilary Swank for Million Dollar Baby (2004).
  • With her soulful eyes, luminous beauty and an emotional intensity that melted hearts, Luise Rainer was well on her way to becoming a queen of Hollywood after only a handful of movies in the 1930s. Her wrenching performance in the 1936 feature film “The Great Ziegfeld” — memorable for the telephone scene in which her character smiles through tears to congratulate ex-husband Flo Ziegfeld on his remarriage — brought Rainer’s first Academy Award. The next year, as a Chinese peasant in the Pearl Buck saga “The Good Earth” (1937), she won again, becoming at age 28 the first actor to win back-to-back Oscars. But Rainer was not a conventional star. She refused to wear glamorous clothes or makeup. She disparaged Hollywood people, preferring the company of George Gershwin, Thomas Mann, Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Einstein and other intellectuals and artists. And she clashed with studio boss Louis B. Mayer over her roles. She wanted to play substantial women, like Madame Curie. Mayer put her in “The Toy Wife” (1938). “We made you and we’re going to kill you,” Mayer warned the German-born actress after a particularly bitter confrontation. He quickly made good on his threat, ruining her career so completely that, as film historian David Thomson later wrote, her two Oscar statuettes “might have been voodoo dolls”. Rainer, whose meteoric rise and rapid descent mystified movie fans for decades. She made only a half-dozen movies before turning her back on Hollywood — leaving her troubled marriage to left-wing playwright Clifford Odets. She appeared only occasionally on stage and in television and film over the next decades. In her final movie role, Rainer played a grandmother in Karoly Makk’s “The Gambler” (1997), based on the Dostoevsky novel, for which she was widely praised. But she mostly lived a quiet life in Europe with British publisher Robert Knittel, whom she married in 1945. Knitted died in 1989.
  • Her death at 104 make her the longest living recipient of a Academy Award for acting.
  • Was the 10th actress to receive an Academy Award; she won the Best Actress Oscar for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) at The 9th Academy Awards on March 4, 1937.
  • Grandmother to Luisa and Nicole, and great-grandmother to Luca and Hunter.
  • Currently lives in Eaton Square, London, in an apartment once occupied by Vivien Leigh. [2004]
  • Still lives in London. [January 2010]
  • On January 12th, 2010, Louise celebrated her 100th birthday. She is still fairly active and spry for her age. [January 2010]
  • Returned to work 14 months after giving birth to her daughter Francesca Knittel-Bowyer to begin performing in the US tour of “Joan of Lorraine”, replacing Ingrid Bergman in the title role.
  • Gave birth to her 1st child at age 36, a daughter Francesca Knittel-Bowyer on June 2, 1946. Child’s father is her now late 2nd husband, Robert Knittel.
  • Gave her 1937 Best Actress Oscar for The Good Earth (1937) to removal men who helped her relocate from Switzerland to London in 1989; she had been using the award as a doorstep for years and it was bent out of shape.
  • Was in consideration for the role of Maria in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) but Ingrid Bergman, who received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance, was cast instead.
  • The first multiple Oscar-winning actor or actress to reach the age of 100. Followed by Olivia de Havilland in 2016.
  • Considers her performance as O-Lan Ling in The Good Earth (1937) to be her finest on film.
  • She is the youngest person to ever win a second Oscar (aged 28, for The Good Earth (1937) ) beating Jodie Foster who was 29 years old when she won for The Silence of the Lambs (1991) .
  • As of 2014, at 104 years old, she was the oldest living Oscar winner.
  • As of 2013, she is only one of 6 actors who have a 2-0 winning record when nominated for an acting Oscar. The others are Vivien Leigh for Gone with the Wind (1939) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951); Helen Hayes for The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931) and Airport (1970); Kevin Spacey for The Usual Suspects (1995) and American Beauty (1999); Hilary Swank for Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and Million Dollar Baby (2004); and Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012).
  • Parents were Heinrich Rainer and his wife Emilie Königsberger.
  • Became a US citizen in the 1940s.
  • She is mentioned in the novel ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote . When discussing Holly Golightly’s chances of making it the Hollywood agent O.J. Berman says, “If you mean future, you’re wrong again. Now a couple of years back, out on the Coast, there was a time it could’ve been different. She had something working for her, she had them interested, she could’ve really rolled. But when you walk out on a thing like that, you don’t walk back. Ask Luise Rainer. And Rainer was a star. Sure, Holly was no star; she never got out of the still department. But that was before The Story of Dr. Wassell. Then she could’ve really rolled. I know, see, cause I’m the guy was giving her the push.”.
  • One of two actresses born in Germany to win the Oscar; the other being Simone Signoret.
  • She shares the honor of having several firsts with the Academy Awards. She was the first actor to achieve the perfect Oscar track record (two nominations-two wins). She was the first actor to receive double Oscars consecutively. She was the first to obtain two Oscars and was the first to achieve double Oscars before turning 30. She was the first actress to win an Academy Award for portraying a real-life person (The Great Ziegfeld (1936)).
  • Of all the living winners of a competitive Oscar she has had hers the longest (as of 2013) – 77 years. She last won in 1937 for The Good Earth (1937).
  • When the Academy decided to bring back past Oscar winners in 1997 and 2002 for their Oscar Family Album, despite frail health, Ms. Rainer happily agreed to travel from London to Hollywood to attend both ceremonies. She remarked “If I don’t show up they’ll think I’m dead!” both times.
  • Federico Fellini offered her a part in his 1960 film La Dolce Vita (1960), and a scene was written specifically for her. She was not happy with the character, however, and asked for rewrites to be done. Ultimately Fellini abandoned the idea due to these demands, much to her chagrin.
  • Attended the 75th Academy Awards and appeared in the Oscar winner tribute sequence introduced by Olivia de Havilland. Was the most senior member of the Oscar Tribute sequence at the The 75th Annual Academy Awards (2003).
  • Was the first actor/actress to win back-to-back Acadamy Awards for her performances in The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937). She was also the first actor/actress to win two Academy Awards. The following year, 1938, Spencer Tracy , Bette Davis and Walter Brennan also became double Oscar winners.
  • Her second husband, Robert Knittel, was a New York publisher whom she married in 1945. They had one child, Francesca.
  • Was forced to attend the Oscar ceremony by Louis B. Mayer to receive her Oscar. In the early Academy Awards ceremonies the winners were announced beforehand in the newspapers. A team of MGM staff arrived at her house and made her dress in appropriate evening wear, and rushed her to the show – just in time.
  • A non-conformist to the MGM star-system, she used to parade around Hollywood untidily dressed, usually with no make-up and wearing pants. Her non-conformist style of behavior cost Ms. Rainer her contract with MGM in the late ’30s.
  • Was coaxed out of a 20-year retirement to appear on Combat!: Finest Hour (1965).

Luise Rainer Filmography

Title Year Status Character Role
The Gambler 1997 Grandmother Actress
A Dancer 1991 TV Movie Anna Actress
The Love Boat 1984 TV Series Dorothy Fielding / Maggie Koerner Actress
Combat! 1965 TV Series Countess De Roy Actress
BBC Sunday-Night Theatre 1950-1957 TV Series Inga Arlberg / Nina Actress
Der erste Kuß 1954 Actress
Suspense 1954 TV Series Actress
Lux Video Theatre 1950-1953 TV Series Caroline / Mrs. Page Actress
Schlitz Playhouse 1952 TV Series Chambermaid Actress
Faith Baldwin Romance Theatre 1951 TV Series Actress
By Candlelight 1949 TV Movie Elizabeth Actress
The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre 1949 TV Series Actress
Hostages 1943 Milada Pressinger Actress
Dramatic School 1938 Louise Mauban Actress
The Great Waltz 1938 Poldi Vogelhuber Actress
The Toy Wife 1938 Gilberte ‘Frou Frou’ Brigard Actress
Big City 1937 Anna Benton Actress
The Emperor’s Candlesticks 1937 Countess Olga Mironova Actress
The Good Earth 1937 O-Lan Actress
The Great Ziegfeld 1936 Anna Held Actress
Escapade 1935 Leopoldine Dur Actress
Heut’ kommt’s drauf an 1933 Marita Costa Actress
Madame hat Besuch 1932 Actress
Sehnsucht 202 1932 Kitty (as Louise Rainer) Actress
The Great Ziegfeld 1936 performer: “Won’t You Come and Play with Me”, “It’s Delightful to Be Married” 1907 – uncredited Soundtrack
TCM: Twenty Classic Moments 2014 TV Movie documentary special thanks Thanks
Ziegfeld on Film 2004 Video documentary short special thanks Thanks
Brisant 2011 TV Series documentary Herself Self
Prominent! 2011 TV Series Herself Self
Luise Rainer: Live from the TCM Classic Film Festival 2011 TV Movie documentary Herself Self
Noi che abbiamo fatto la dolce vita 2009 Documentary Herself Self
American Masters 2009 TV Series documentary Herself Self
Hollywood Chinese 2007 Documentary Herself Self
Behind Poem 2004 Video documentary Herself Self
Ziegfeld on Film 2004 Video documentary short Herself / Anna Held (‘The Great Ziegfeld’) Self
Poem: I Set My Foot Upon the Air and It Carried Me 2003 Herself Self
The 75th Annual Academy Awards 2003 TV Special Herself – Past Winner Self
75 Years of the Academy Awards: An Unofficial History 2003 TV Special documentary Herself – Interviewee Self
Greta Garbo: A Lone Star 2001 TV Movie documentary Herself (uncredited) Self
The South Bank Show 2001 TV Series documentary Herself Self
Boulevard Bio 1998 TV Series Herself Self
The 70th Annual Academy Awards 1998 TV Special Herself – Past Winner (uncredited) Self
MGM: When the Lion Roars 1992 TV Mini-Series documentary Herself Self
Happy 100th Birthday, Hollywood 1987 TV Special documentary Herself Self
The 55th Annual Academy Awards 1983 TV Special Herself – Co-Presenter: Best Foreign Language Film Self
Filmemigration aus Nazideutschland 1975 TV Series documentary Himself Self
Girl Talk 1965 TV Series Herself Self
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 1964 TV Series Herself – Guest Self
The Ed Sullivan Show 1949-1959 TV Series Herself / Herself – Actress Self
The 25th Annual Academy Awards 1953 TV Special Herself – Presenter: Best Foreign Language Film Self
Another Romance of Celluloid 1938 Documentary short Herself (uncredited) Self
Screen Snapshots Series 16, No. 8 1937 Documentary short Herself Self
The Candid Camera Story (Very Candid) of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures 1937 Convention 1937 Documentary short Herself (uncredited) Self
The 87th Annual Academy Awards 2015 TV Special Herself – Actress (In Memoriam) Archive Footage
The 21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards 2015 TV Special Herself – In Memoriam Archive Footage
Imprescindibles 2011 TV Series Herself Archive Footage
Protagonistas del recuerdo 2006 TV Series Herself Archive Footage
La imagen de tu vida 2006 TV Series Herself Archive Footage
Cinema mil 2005 TV Series Herself Archive Footage
80s 2005 TV Series documentary Herself Archive Footage
Frank Capra’s American Dream 1997 TV Movie documentary Herself Archive Footage
That’s Entertainment! III 1994 Documentary Performer in Clip from ‘The Great Ziegfeld’ (uncredited) Archive Footage
The Ed Sullivan Show 1958-1959 TV Series Herself – Interviewee / Herself Archive Footage
Some of the Best 1943 Documentary Anna Held in The Great Ziegfeld / O-Lan in The Good Earth (uncredited) Archive Footage
Cavalcade of the Academy Awards 1940 Documentary short Archive Footage
Land of Liberty 1939 Archive Footage
The Romance of Celluloid 1937 Short Anna Benton Archive Footage

Luise Rainer Awards

Year Award Ceremony Nomination Movie Category
1960 Star on the Walk of Fame Walk of Fame Motion Picture On 8 February 1960. At 6300 Hollywood Blvd. Won
1938 Oscar Academy Awards, USA Best Actress in a Leading Role The Good Earth (1937) Won
1937 Oscar Academy Awards, USA Best Actress in a Leading Role The Great Ziegfeld (1936) Won
1937 NYFCC Award New York Film Critics Circle Awards Best Actress The Great Ziegfeld (1936) Won
1960 Star on the Walk of Fame Walk of Fame Motion Picture On 8 February 1960. At 6300 Hollywood Blvd. Nominated
1938 Oscar Academy Awards, USA Best Actress in a Leading Role The Good Earth (1937) Nominated
1937 Oscar Academy Awards, USA Best Actress in a Leading Role The Great Ziegfeld (1936) Nominated
1937 NYFCC Award New York Film Critics Circle Awards Best Actress The Great Ziegfeld (1936) Nominated