Background
Skala was born Lilia Sofer in Vienna, Austria. Her mother, Katharina Skala, was Catholic, and her father, Julius Sofer, was Jewish and worked as a manufacturers representative for the Waldes Koh-i-noor Company.
Skala was born Lilia Sofer in Vienna, Austria. Her mother, Katharina Skala, was Catholic, and her father, Julius Sofer, was Jewish and worked as a manufacturers representative for the Waldes Koh-i-noor Company.
Lilia Skala appeared on countless television shows and serials from 1952 to 1985 (for example, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1965), and as Grand Duchess Sophie kept company on Broadway with Ethel Merman in Call Maine Madam not too many years after toiling in a Queens zipper factory as a non-English-speaking refugee from Austria. She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress for her most famous role as the Mother Superior in 1963"s Lilies of the Field opposite Oscar-winning Sidney Poitier. Skala also appeared in Ship of Fools (1965), Charly (1968), Deadly Hero (1976), Eleanor and Franklin (1976), Roseland (1977), Heartland (1979) Flashdance (1983) and House of Games (1987).
She died in Bay Shore, New York, of natural causes at age 98.
Her life is the subject of an eponymous one-woman play Lilia!.
