Luise Rainer was born in Dusseldorf, Germany in 1910. She began acting in her teens and joined Max Reinhardt's theatre company, performing many of the classics with him in Vienna, and also touring Austria and Germany. She made her first few films in Germany in the early 1930s but before the rise of the Third Reich and Hitler's Anti-Semitism took hold she was spotted by an MGM talent scout and received an offer to make films in Hollywood. She accepted and emigrated to the US, aged 24.
MGM didn't know what to do with her at first and for a long while she was put up in a hotel, at great expense to the studio, bemused by the behaviour of the Hollywood behemoth. Eventually she was cast in her first English speaking role in "Escapade" (1935) after Myrna Loy became unavailable. Her co-star, William Powell, took her under his wing and taught her how to act for the camera. She was paired again with Powell in her next film, the epic biography of "The Great Ziegfeld" (1936), playing Florenz Ziegfeld's wife Anna Held - her performance won her first Oscar and launched her into the big league of movie stars, and she was heralded as the 'New Garbo'. The award was widely seen as controversial due to the Luise's short screen time and also the stature of her fellow nominees (Carole Lombard, Norma Shearer and Irene Dunne).
It was around this time that she met the left-wing playwright Clifford Odets, whom she married in 1937. Luise's life in Hollywood was always an artistic struggle for her. She rarely socialised with her co-stars, and would spend her time with artists, playwrights or those in the theatre. The falseness and superficiality of the Hollywood studio 'machine' was anathema to her. Her marriage was short-lived and tempestuous, but there is no doubt that the pair were deeply in love. Luise's next film, however, kept her and Odets apart for almost a year while she filmed in Hollywood and he worked in New York. The film, "The Good Earth" (1937) was a huge historical epic, set in China and was the last of the great dramas which Irving Thalberg produced at MGM. Luise again courted controversy by playing a Chinese peasant (many expected leading Chinese actress Anna May Wong to be cast), but quickly silenced her critics and those for whom her Oscar was an aberration by displaying a performance of great intensity and emotion. Her second Oscar was assured and this time it was, on the whole, seen as well-deserved. But, the filming lasted for over a year and caused irreparable damage to Luise's marriage. She longed to be with Odets in New York, to hang out with the theatre crowd and resented her contract at MGM which kept her away from both her husband and her friends.
Other parts were lined up for Luise, including a version of "The Girl from Trieste", directed by Dorothy Arzner, but her career path and her life changed with the death of Irving Thalberg in 1936. Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer had both run the MGM studio along different lines and with Thalberg gone Mayer was determined to concentrate on the commercial successes and dispense with any unnecessary expense for more serious drama - Luise had already rocked the boat as far as Mayer was concerned, with interviews in the movie press, openly discussing her boredom and her hatred of the tedium of Hollywood film-making, and famously had to be cajoled into attending the Academy Awards ceremony to collect her Oscar, preferring to stay at home. She was also one of the few stars who refused to bow down to Mayer's command and behave liked a trained puppy for him. Luise said once that she would never sit on his lap like all the other girls, desperate for stardom. After "The Good Earth" there would not be another role of similar depth for Luise - she wanted to play the great classic roles for the screen, but instead she was offered less rewarding parts, often in films that appealed to a mass audience, but which Luise found dreary and beneath her. Her relationship with the 'Communist' Odets was also making her few friends amongst the Hollywood community.
By the end of 1938 she had made her last film for MGM and in less than three years her Hollywood career was almost over. She travelled to London, where she appeared in a play by Jacques Deval, "Behold the Bride", but it received mixed reviews and was not a success. By now Luise and Odets' tumultuous relationship was over, and they divorced in 1940. Years later Luise would reveal details of an abortion, and her heartbreak at not making her marriage to Odets work. She was deeply in love with the man and his mind, but they were both striving for the same artistic integrity at the expense of their relationship. More theatre work ("A Kiss for Cinderella" on Broadway in 1942) and one more film were to follow (Paramount's "Hostages" in 1943) before Luise met her second husband, publisher Robert Knittel. They married in 1945 and Luise effectively retired from acting.
In the intervening years Luise worked sporadically on television and in the theatre, choosing roles she really wanted to play, and got a chance at some of those parts that Hollywood had refused her, including 'Nina' in Chekhov's "The Seagull" for British television, Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan" on tour in the US, and even an episode of US TV series "The Love Boat" in 1984! Federico Fellini wrote a part specially for her in his 1960 "La Dolce Vita", but she was unhappy with the part and asked for rewrites to the script. It never happened. She also produced her own artwork, some of which was included in a show at the Patrick Seale gallery in London, 1978, and made many public appearances speaking about her time in Hollywood and her life with Odets, including appearances at the 70th and 75th Academy Award ceremonies celebrating past winners of the acting awards.
She finally returned to the big screen, 53 years after her last film, in "The Gambler" (1996), playing an aged Grandmother trying her luck at the roulette table in Karoly Makk's take on Dostoyevsky's novel. Although appearing in only a few short scenes she commanded the screen and stole the film. Since then she has made one more film appearance, reciting a poem for the German film "Poem" (2003), shot on location in Iceland. This is the first time Luise has spoken German in a film for 70 years and she relished the part.
Luise's place in movie history is assured, as the first person to win two Oscars in consecutive years and the first person to win two Oscars before their 30th birthday. Now in her 90s, Luise lives in her apartment in London's Belgravia, still with an inimitable style and an indomitable character.
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