Daughter of Bretislav Lvovsky (1857-1910), a minor Czech opera composer, Celia was born in Vienna where she trained at the Royal Academy of Arts and Music. She was a rising stage star in Vienna and Berlin in 1929, when she met future husband Peter Lorre. Celia accompanied the Jewish Lorre when he fled Hitler's Berlin to Vienna in 1933, then to Paris, then London where they married during the filming of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), in which Celia had an uncredited bit as a Russian aristocrat. Though she accompanied Lorre to Hollywood, she did not act professionally while married; but, after their divorce in 1945, she became a Hollywood character actress, appearing in over 40 films from 1947 to 1973 and about 200 TV episodes through 1976. Due to her accent, she played mostly European-born characters, often dignified or aristocratic; occasionally Hispanics, once an American Indian (with a Viennese accent!), and of course the ruler of the planet Vulcan. Celia remained a close friend of Peter Lorre until his death in 1964; she died of natural causes in 1979, at age 82.