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| Birth Name(s) : Louisa Castro |
Date of Birth: 1946 |
| Status:
N/A
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Partner:
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| Profession:
Actor |
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Full Louisa Moritz Biography
Born in the wealthy Havana, Cuba, district of Vedado, LOUISA MORITZ would come home from Sunday movies at the “El Riviera”movie theatre (where they showed old American musicals such as the ones with Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Jane Powell, and specially the teenage musicals) and she would sing songs to an imaginary lover in the mirror of her Louis XV bedroom suite, and reenact some of the love scenes or make up new ones with her mirror.
The Castro family (no relation to Fidel Castro) consisted of a large retinue of cousins, and Louisa's half brothers and sisters, who all happened to be in the law profession. Her sister, “Aurora” Castro, was the first female lawyer in Cuba, and Rafael, her older brother, and Gaudencio, the next to the last youngest (Louisa was the youngest), all worked at the law office which Louisa loved to visit, with the imposing black wrought iron prison-like door that opened right into the suite, to the massive desks and the mountains of paper that her father, Luis, and the half brothers worked on at the law office. They spent holidays at “la finca en Pinar del Rio, where Louisa and her same-age favorite cousin, Inesita, would make “cotton frituras” and serve them at the holiday table. (These were made out of actual cotton and fried in the egg batter, and were tough enough to take out everybody's dentures, and the elders would bite and scream, during their otherwise lavish holiday meals.
Her first break came when the William Morris agency called her in from a photo mail out featuring her in a potato sack, with just her head showing, and the later to become famous dimpled wide-eyed smile which later won her over one hundred commercials. She also won the Clio and the Andy award as the best commercial performer of the year, for her work as a student driver in the “American Motors? Commercial where she made famous the words “What car? What bus?” followed by a crash. She worked with famous movie director Howard Zieff, who directed her in this commercial, as well as other well-known directors such as Stan Dragotti and Bruce Mahlmouth (Nighthawks).
Her first movie lead was the role of “Carmella” in the film “The Man from O.R.G.Y.” produced by Sidney Pink, where she played the young prostitute who inherits a fortune from one of her late clients, and the representatives of the deceased spend half of the movie looking for a tattoo which Carmella sported on her derriere, so that they could locate her and avoid impostors.
After many television shows, probably her most memorable being “Love American Style”, where she debuted with Uncle Miltie, in “Love and the Vacation”. Milton scolded her vigorously for “upstaging” him, when she entered the scene and flipped her long scarf across her breasts. He said “Nobody upstages Milton Berle!”.
Louisa was a prominently featured co-star in the Emmy award winning show “The Associates” where she played “Vera”, a girl that John Ritter picks up at a bar the night before, and her long hair gets caught in John's pants' zipper, while she is trying to talk his young son into coming out of his room. The hilarious show “The Associates” won most of the Emmy awards that year.
Louisa invested some of her earnings in real estate ventures. She purchased a hotel in Beverly Hills which she named “The Beverly Hills St. Moritz” and, having lost it through foreclosure, was drawn back to one of her first loves, law school. Although she had her Cuban college credits and one year of Public Accounting, which she earned at the very young age of 13, she had to retake college courses, which she did through the government program called “CLEP”, which took her 3 years, while she acted, studied singing, wrote songs, managed her real estate, and married William Noel Fine, a movie producer, whose claim to fame was that he produced “Touch of Class”.
Overcoming all odds of time constraints, etc., she completed her “CLEP” and then proceeded to take the LSAT (law school admittance test), for which she studied with private tutors at UCLA. She obtained a very high score of 154 over 180 on her LSAT and she was admitted to law school at UWLA, the University of West Los Angeles, where she completed her first year of law school, garnering a Dean's List, and winning the coveted American Jurisprudence Bancroft-Whitney Award for the highest grade in Contracts in the University. Nobody was more shocked than she was, she says, when she saw her name on the University bulletin board, as the winner of the American Jurisprudence Bancroft Whitney Award, and the Dean's List!
During this time, she appeared on the Jay Leno “Tonite” Show, where she sang the original song that she penned for Jay, which she called “Jay's Song”.
She also played the part of “Sally” in the movie starring Janeane Garofalo and Jerry Stiller, entitled “The Independent”. “Sally” was Jerry Stiller's character's Marty's former star of his B movies, and now, his secretary, receptionist, and general all-around right hand person.
Louisa has now achieved her life-long dream, to obtain a law degree. She is currently sitting for the bar in February 2003. |
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Additional Louisa Moritz Biography
Moritz has made many television appearances on game shows, such as Match Game and many made-for-TV movies, usually playing a ditzy blond. She played the navigator in Sylvester Stallone's car in Death Race 2000.
She's also memorable for her performance as Rose, the blond prostitue in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest where on the set, she befriended Muskogee Creek Indian actor Will Sampson who played the big Indian in the film. She and Sampson spent hours between takes playing guitars and singing.
She also starred in The Last American Virgin, as an older woman who is lonely because her sailor mate is never home, and thus hints to a pizza delivering teenager that she wants more than just pizza. Being to afraid to act on it, he brings over his two friends, and she entices them all to have sex with her in sequence. Just before the original kid's turn, her mate comes back and chases the kids away. She is also remembered for jumping out of a cake on Happy Days at Richie's 18th birthday party, and for doing the voice of Chita in the R-rated adult cartoon The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat.
In 1975 Moritz, with the help of her personal assistant Steve Osburn, fellow actor Monte Bane, and friend Don Monte of the National Enquirer, moved out of her Hollywood Boulevard apartment into her first home on Mount Olympus in the Hollywood Hills.
She sold real estate in the Los Angeles area and later married producer Billy Fine who also cast her in one of the films he produced called "Jungle Warriors." Louisa bought a hotel on South Reeves in Beverly Hills and renamed it "The Saint Moritz Hotel" after herself.
Her first appearance on television was in a commercial for Ultra-Ban, a spray deodorant that included aluminum chlorhydrate. Her performance in the commercial ("Sprays are so modern you'd expect them to do everything!") very likely led to her casting as a stereotypical dumb blond.
Moritz has always had the dream of being an attorney like her father and uncle. Her dream finally came true when she finished law school and passed the California bar exam. |
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