Biography

Lien Deyers

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Dutch actress Lien Deyers was discovered by the great German director Fritz Lang, who gave her a part in his film Spies (1928). After that she became a big star in Germany and appeared in many successful films in the 1930s. She married director Alfred Zeisler. When the Nazis came to power, she and her Jewish husband left Germany for England. There she couldn't find work in the film business, so she and her husband went to the US to try their luck.

In the US things went from bad to worse. Unable to find work in Hollywood, she was forced to take jobs outside the business. Her marriage to Zeisler eventually failed, and she took to the bottle to solve her problems. She soon became an alcoholic and had numerous run-ins with the law. She married and divorced a few times, but soon completely vanished from the public view. The last time she was heard from was in 1964, when she was in a Las Vegas (NV) jail. It is thought that she died shortly after that.
- IMDb mini biography by: A. Nonymous

At the early age of five her potential was noted by Amsterdam theatre owner and film producer David Sluizer, but she did not enter the film business. She lived her childhood years in Amsterdam and later The Hague until her stepfather, owner of a big hotel in The Hague, married the Austrian actress Lotte Erol. Lien then traveled between The Hague, Vienna (where the family mostly lived) and Lausanne, where she went to a private school and became fluent in French.
The time of her death is not ascertainable, last she was in the Clark County Jail in Las Vegas in September 1964 but it seems that she died in 1965.
Deyers, who by the time had a reputation of being 'mentally extremely unstable', couldn't find work in Hollywood. The place was crawling with exiled German actors all focusing on the few roles that required a foreign accent.
In august 1926 the Austrian weekly Mein Film staged a competition for new young screen talent and Lien submitted her photograph. Together with twenty other contendants she was chosen for a screen-test by director Hans Otto, which she won. Subsequently, during an autograph session in the Mein Film offices in 1927, she was introduced to the well-known Austrian director Fritz Lang, who happened to be in need of a young blonde for a role in his new movie Spione, written by his wife, the playwright Thea von Harbou.
Also in her early sound movies she had great success.

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