Biographie

Mother of the actresses Elisabeth Orth, Christiane Hörbiger and Maresa Hörbiger.

Laurence Olivier considered Wessely one of the greatest actresses of the twentieth century.

Bette Davis was known to have studied Wessely's film performances.

Theatre actress at the famous Burgtheater in Vienna from 1953 to 1987. She retired from acting shortly after her husband's death.

As she appeared on antisemitic propaganda movies, she was criticized later by Austrian intellectuals. Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek considered Heimkehr (1941) the worst Nazi propaganda movie of all and called Wessely "the prototype of an actress in the Third Reich".