Nina Foch was born Nina Consuelo Maud Fock in Leiden, Netherlands to American actress and singer Consuelo Flowerton and Dutch classical music conductor Dirk Fock. After her mother and father divorced when Foch was a toddler, she went with her mother to the United States, settling in New York City. As Foch grew up in New York, her mother encouraged her artistic talents; Foch learned piano and enjoyed art but was more interested in acting. Foch attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and also studied method acting under Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler. After signing a contract with Columbia Pictures at age nineteen, Foch made her feature film debut in the studio’s horror picture The Return of the Vampire (1943) with Bela Lugosi, subsequently appearing in Columbia’s Cry of the Werewolf the next year. This was followed with a role in the biopic A Song to Remember (1945), the drama I Love a Mystery (1945); as well as a string of film noirs, including Escape in the Fog, My Name is Julia Ross (1945), Johnny O’Clock (1947), The Dark Past (1948), The Undercover Man (1948), and Johnny Allegro (1949). During this time, she was also a regular in John Houseman’s CBS Playhouse 90 television series. In 1951, Foch appeared with Gene Kelly in the musical An American in Paris, which was awarded the Best Picture Oscar that year. Foch appeared in Scaramouche (1952) as Marie Antoinette, and in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956) as Bithiah, the Pharaoh’s daughter who finds the infant Moses in the bulrushes, adopts him as her son, and joins him and the Hebrews in their Exodus from Egypt. In 1957, Foch was honored by the Maryland State Council of the American Jewish Congress with a special award for her performance in The Ten Commandments.

Foch received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the boardroom drama Executive Suite (1954), starring William Holden, Fredric March and Barbara Stanwyck. In Spartacus (1960), starring Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier, she played a woman who chooses gladiators to fight to the death in the ring, simply for her entertainment. In 1961, she guest starred in the NBC series about the family divisions from American Civil War entitled The Americans. In 1963, she appeared on the NBC game show Your First Impression. In 1964, she played the title role in the episode “Maggie, Queen of the Jungle” of Craig Stevens’s short-lived CBS drama series, Mr. Broadway. She was cast as Eva Frazier in the Outer Limits episode “The Borderland”. She appeared in an episode of Gunsmoke as the widowed matriarch of a lawless town. She was also cast as the first murder victim of the Columbo mystery series starring Peter Falk, appearing in the pilot movie, Prescription: Murder (1968), with Gene Barry as her husband, a homicidal psychiatrist. In the early 1970s, she guest starred on NBC’s The Brian Keith Show. In 1975, she appeared in the film Mahogany, starring Diana Ross. She played in an episode on Combat! titled episode “The Casket”.

Later in her career, Foch appeared in War and Remembrance (1988) as the seemingly-nice librarian who soon advises Jane Seymour’s character that the best place for her and her uncle would be the un-aptly named “Paradise Ghetto”. She also appeared as ‘Frannie Halcyon’ in the TV miniseries Tales of the City (1993). Another notable TV role was as the Overseer Commander (or “Kleezantzun”) in the first of the Alien Nation TV movies, Alien Nation: Dark Horizon (1994). In her final years, she appeared on the television series Just Shoot Me, Bull, Dharma & Greg, and NCIS, the latter portraying Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard’s elderly mother. Foch taught “Directing the Actor” classes at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, classes she had taught since the 1960s up to her death. She also worked as an independent script-breakdown consultant for many prominent Hollywood directors. For her contributions to film and television, Foch has stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 6300 Hollywood Boulevard, and 7000 Hollywood Boulevard. Foch died on December 5, 2008, at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. Her only son, Dirk de Brito, told the Los Angeles Times that she died of complications from the blood disorder myelodysplasia. She had become ill the day before, while teaching at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.