Mala Powers

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Birthday:

20 December 1931, San Francisco, California, USA

Birth Name:

Mary Ellen Powers

Height:

168 cm

The daughter of a United Press executive, Mala Powers attended the Max Reinhardt Junior Workshop as a kid and fell in love with acting the first time she set foot on a stage. She made her film debut in Universal's 1942 Tough As They Come (1942) before actress Helene Thimig (Max Reinhardt's wife) convinced her to continue studying rather than become a child actress. Powers worked in radio ("Cisco Kid", "Red Ryder", "This Is Your F.B.I.", "Lux Radio Theater", "Screen Guild on the Air") and met actress Ida Lupino while working on the latter show; Lupino auditioned and approved Powers for the top role in Outrage (1950), made by Lupino's Filmmakers production company. Powers' promising career was derailed by illness in the early '50s; when she resumed work, it was as the "B queen" of Westerns and sci-fi flicks (and much TV). For many years she has been lecturing on and teaching the Michael Chekhov acting technique throughout the U.S. Show less «

[from a 1990 interview] No, I'm not pleased with my career; yes, I am pleased with my life. I just loved good roles: I would love to have do...Show more »

[from a 1990 interview] No, I'm not pleased with my career; yes, I am pleased with my life. I just loved good roles: I would love to have done great big roles in great big "A" pictures, roles that had meat in them. Would any actress not like to play Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939)? From a career standpoint, of course that's what I would like to have done. It never quite happened for me that way, but I had some wonderfully satisfying experiences, I learned a tremendous lot, I had a marvelous teacher, and who knows what'll happen at this point? I don't necessarily know that I've finished with acting. Show less «