Nina Foch /niːnə.fɑːʃ/ (born Nina Consuelo Maud Fock; April 20, 1924 – December 5, 2008) was a Dutch-born American actress of film, stage, and television. After signing a contract with Columbia Pictures at age nineteen, the tall, blonde Foch became a regular in the studio's horror pictures and film noirs before establishing herself as a leading lady in the mid-1940s through the 1950s, often playing roles as cool, aloof sophisticates. Her career spanned six decades, consisting of over fifty feature films and over one hundred television appearances.

She is perhaps best known for her roles in An American in Paris (1951); Robert Wise's Executive Suite (1954), which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress; Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956); and Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960).

Foch also worked prominently in television, starring in a multitude of television series from 1951 until 2007. In addition to acting, Foch taught drama at the American Film Institute and at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, where she was a faculty member for over forty years until her death in 2008.

Biography

Foch lived in Beverly Hills, California, for 40 years and married three times. Her first marriage was to James Lipton, future host of Inside the Actors Studio. She married her second husband, Dennis de Brito, in 1959; and the couple had one child before divorcing in 1963. Her third and last marriage was to Michael Dewell in 1967. The couple divorced in 1993.

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