Lila Kedrova

Lila Kedrova (9 October c. 1918 – 16 February 2000), was a Russian-born French actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Zorba the Greek (1964), and Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical for same role on the musical version of film.

Life and career

Kedrova claimed to have been born in 1918, in Petrograd, Russia. Her parents were Russian opera singers. Her father, Nikolay, was a singer and composer, a creator of the first Russian male quartet to perform liturgical chants. Her mother, Sofia Gladkaya (ru: Софья Николаевна Гладкая) (1875–1965), was a singer at the Mariinsky Theatre and a teacher of Conservatoire de Paris. Kedrova's brother, Nikolay (1905–1981) was a Russian singer and composer of liturgical music.

Some time after the October Revolution, in 1922, the family emigrated to Berlin. In 1928 they moved to France, where Kedrova's mother taught at the Conservatoire de Paris, and her father again recreated the quartet "Quatuor Kedroff". In 1932, Lila Kedrova joined the Moscow Art Theatre touring company. Then her film career began, mostly in French films, until her first English appearance in 1964 as Mme Hortense in Zorba the Greek. Her performance won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Kedrova appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's 1966 film, Torn Curtain playing the role of Countess Kuchinska. She then went on to play a series of eccentric or batty ladies in several Hollywood films. In 1983, she reprised her role as Mme Hortense on Broadway in the musical version of Zorba the Greek, winning both a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical and a Drama Desk Award in the process. In 1989 she played Madame Armfeldt in the London revival of A Little Night Music.

Death

In 2000, Kedrova died at her summer home in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, of pneumonia, after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.