- Born
- Died
- Birth namePatricia Paz Maria Medina
- Height5′ 7½″ (1.71 m)
- Patricia Paz Maria Medina was born on July 19, 1919 in Liverpool, England to a Spanish father and an English mother. She began acting as a teenager in the late 1930s and worked her way up to leading roles in the mid-1940s, then left for Hollywood. Medina teamed up with British actor Louis Hayward and they appeared together in Fortunes of Captain Blood (1950), The Lady and the Bandit (1951), Lady in the Iron Mask (1952) and Captain Pirate (1952). Voluptuous and exotic-looking, Medina was often typecast in period melodramas such as The Black Knight (1954). Two of her more notable films were William Witney's Stranger at My Door (1956) and Orson Welles's Confidential Report (1955), a follow-up of The Third Man (1949), based on the radio series "The Lives of Harry Lime". Although prolific during the early 1950s, her film career faded away by the end of the decade, leading to stage and television roles.
Medina appeared as Margarita Cortazar in four episodes of Walt Disney's Zorro (1957), and as Diana Coulter in two episodes of Richard Boone's Have Gun - Will Travel (1957). She returned to the screen in Robert Aldrich's adaptation of the lesbian-themed drama The Killing of Sister George (1968). She and her husband, American actor Joseph Cotten, toured together in several plays and on Broadway in the murder mystery, "Calculated Risk". Her appearances on television include episodes of Bonanza (1959) titled "The Spanish Grant" and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962) titled "See the Monkey Dance". She played Harriet Balfour in an episode of Perry Mason (1957) titled "The Case of the Lucky Loser", and as Lucia Belmont in an episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) titled "The Foxes and Hounds Affair".
Patricia Medina retired from acting in 1978 after 40 years in the motion picture industry. She died at age 92 of natural causes on April 28, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. She was interred at Blandford Cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia, alongside Cotten.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Bill Takacs/Robert Sieger
- SpousesJoseph Cotten(October 20, 1960 - February 6, 1994) (his death)Richard Greene(December 24, 1941 - June 25, 1951) (divorced)
- ChildrenNo Children
- ParentsRamón Medina Nebot
- Natural brunette hair
- Voluptuous assets
- Seductive deep voice
- Classy yet impassioned demeanor
- She died at Barlow Respiratory Hospital in Elysian Park, Los Angeles. She was interred at Blandford Cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia, beside her husband, Joseph Cotten.
- During the making of Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961), Patricia Medina and Carol Heiss reportedly did not get along with each other in real life with Heiss doing her utmost to get Medina fired.
- Made her Broadway debut with "Calculated Risks" (1962) opposite her second husband Joseph Cotten.
- Was a naturalized citizen of the United States; resided in Los Angeles, California.
- Had appeared with Louis Hayward in four films: Fortunes of Captain Blood (1950), The Lady and the Bandit (1951), Lady in the Iron Mask (1952) and Captain Pirate (1952).
- [on working with Lou Costello in Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion (1950)] He was a perfect gentleman, and so helpful to somebody who hadn't done very much acting. He would ad-lib out of habit--he just couldn't help it. He certainly didn't do it to throw you, and if he did throw you, he was terribly apologetic and sweet. The only thing was, it was very difficult to look him in the eye without breaking up--he had that angelic face. He was a naughty little Peter Pan, he never grew up. And although he was a child, you can't be that great a performer without being a true sophisticate. And he was that. Many children are most sophisticated, and Lou was a very sophisticated child. I thought he was the greatest comedian I had ever seen. (Quoted in Abbott and Costello in Hollywood, by Bob Furmanek and Ron Palumbo.)
- [In 1947, from the New York Times] In England, I was nearly always cast as someone of mysterious origin, not too clearly designated but probably from some Southern European country. Here, they decided in my first film The Secret Heart (1946) that I should be a Yankee. I my second film, I'm definitely English. It's all rather confusing, I must say.
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