Catherine Schell

This is to celebrate the 80th birthday last year of Catherine Schell. Born in Budapest, Hungary her birth name was Katherina Freiin Schell von Bauschlott and she is the scion of a once very wealthy German patrician family, with her father a Baron and her mother a Countess, the father being a well-respected diplomat until the Nazis seized their estates in World War 2. She is a great niece of King Louis IV of France, and Franz I, the 50th Holy Roman Emperor. The family lived in poverty until 1948 when they sought asylum in Vienna and Salzburg when the communist regime began to take hold in Hungary. In 1950 the family emigrated to US with father renouncing his title of Baron to gain citizenship and she was entered into a convent school in Staten Island, New York. In 1957 her father joined Radio Free Europe taking the family to Munich where she started her interest in acting and was at the prestigious Falconberg school. While filming Amsterdam Affair 1968 she met and married the actor William Marlowe and moved to London, that marriage ending in 1977, after which she met and married director Bill Hays. Notable films Moon Zero Two and was Nancy in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service 1969, Callan and The Black Windmill 1974, but also The Return of the Pink Panther 1975; she was frequently on TV – The Persuaders 1971, The Adventurer & Madame Sin 1972, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes 1973, Napoleon and Love 1974, The Sweeney 1975, Return of the Saint 1978 and perhaps best known for the alien Maya in Space: 1999 in 1975, although she was in a series of Doctor Who episodes City of Death in 1979, The Spoils of War 1980-81, Bergerac 1983. After a TV production of A Month in the Country 1985, her career was stalling by Wish Me Luck in 1987 and she retired from acting and with her husband ran a small guest hotel in Bonneval, Craponne-sur-Arzon, Haute-Loire in France, where she still resides, although he passed in 2006. She resumed acting with Dracula 2020 and The Munsters 2022 and has a total of 66 screen credits.