Louise Sorel

Louise Sorel (born August 6, 1940) is an American actress.

Biography

Early life

Sorel was born in New York City into a theatrical family; her mother was actress and pianist Jeanne Sorel, while her father was producer Albert J. Cohen. She received theatrical training at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. She also briefly attended the Institut de Français abroad.

Career

Sorel's early career was on the stage; she spent several years on Broadway stages playing roles in the comedy "Take Her, She's Mine" and the play "Man and Boy". [http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?id=106900] She also appeared in productions of "The Lion in Winter" and "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window". Sorel's first appearance in a film was in the 1965 film "The Party's Over". She also appeared in "Plaza Suite", "Every Little Crook and Nanny", "B.S. I Love You", "", and "Where the Boys Are '84", among others.

Sorel has had a prolific career making guest appearances on primetime television, appearing on over 50 primetime programs and television movies. From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, Sorel appeared on a number of shows, including a notable guest appearance on "" as Rayna Kapec, in the episode "Requiem for Methuselah", first broadcast in 1969. She also was a guest star on "Knots Landing", " The Curse of Dracula", "Bonanza", "Ladies Man", "Charlie's Angels", "Vega$", "Medical Center", and "Hawaii Five-O", to name a few. She had a principal role as the wife of Don Rickles on the 1972 sitcom "The Don Rickles Show".

According to Hal Erickson of All Movie Guide, Sorel was often cast as the mystery woman, or the "foul play" lady, when she was a guest star on a program. [http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=66923]

For example, Sorel gave a widely-acclaimed and very memorable performance as Helena Varga, a young woman from the bad side of the tracks whose photographic memory becomes valuable to a drug kingpin in the 1974 Wolper-produced TV movie "Get Christie Love", starring Teresa Graves. The movie, based on the Dorothy Uhnak novel "The Ledger", inspired a short-lived ABC series starring Graves (the first African-American actress afforded her own one-hour drama) and became a cult favorite a generation later when the movie was released on DVD.

Sorel has also had a career in daytime television. Her first role was as eccentric, meddlesome Augusta Wainwright on the NBC daytime drama "Santa Barbara". Sorel's character was married to a member of the show's wealthy family, the Lockridges; she and her husband had a love/hate relationship.

She appeared on "Santa Barbara" from 1984 to 1986, from 1988 to 1989, and finally from 1990 to 1991. In between stints, she also spent a year appearing as Judith Sanders on the ABC soap opera "One Life to Live", in 1987. She is probably best known as outrageous villainess Vivian Alamain on the NBC daytime serial, "Days of Our Lives". Sorel played the role from June 1992 to February 2000. Sorel's performance as the comic villainess garnered her three Soap Opera Digest Awards as "Outstanding Villainess" in 1994, "Outstanding Showstopper" in 1997 and again in 1999 as "Outstanding Scene Stealer." Her character was evil early on but became many shades of grey later on - among her many misdeeds was burying a woman alive, and stealing her rival's embryo, which she had implanted into her womb and subsequently carried to term - but the character also had a comic bent. The character was married several times during her run on the program, making Vivian's full name "Vivian Alamain Rockridge Vanduusen Kiriakis Kiriakis Jones DiMera".

In 2000, shortly after being let go from "Days of Our Lives", Sorel briefly joined the cast of the now defunct ABC daytime soap opera "Port Charles" as fashion maven "Donatella Stewart" (a pun on the names Donatella Versace and Martha Stewart). The role lasted for a month. In 2001, she had a brief role on another ABC soap opera "All My Children" as "Judge Kay Campobello".

Most recently, she made a brief appearance on the NBC show "Passions" as the cannery worker Dort in 2004.

Personal life

Her first husband was late comic actor Herb Edelman, who was perhaps best known for his role as Dorothy's husband Stan on The Golden Girls. Edelman and Sorel were married from 1964 to 1970. (Sorel was later Edelman's co-star on the series "Ladies Man", made several years after their divorce.)

She met actor Ken Howard in 1972, they were married in 1973, but they were divorced in 1976.

External links

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* [http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?id=106900 Louise Sorel at the Internet Broadway Database]