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Elisabeth Müller was born on 18 July 1926 in Basel, Switzerland. After she already received private acting lessons at an early age by her aunt, the stage actress Ellen Widmann, and her husband, the actor Adolf Manz, Elisabeth Müller attended the theater school in Zurich from 1944 to 1946. After her graduation she got an engagement at the Schauspielhaus Zürich where she took part in the world premiere of Carl Zuckmayer's "Des Teufels General" ("The Devil's General") among others. The director was Heinz Hilpert who became her mentor in the following years: When he went to the newly founded Deutsches Theater in Konstanz in 1948 he also employed Müller there. In 1950 he became director of the Deutsches Theater in Göttingen - and Müller followed him there as well. Until 1954 she appeared on stage in Göttingen as Walburga in Hauptmann's "Die Ratten" ("The Rats"), as Lady Milford in Schiller's "Kabale und Liebe" ("Intrigue and Love") and in the title role of Goethe's "Stella".
Müller had already made her big screen debut in 1947 with a supporting role as a nurse in the Swiss thriller "Matto regiert", but only from 1952 did she appeared regularly in film productions. Her great breakthrough came quickly with her leading role as a grieving widow in Kurt Hoffmann's "Moselfahrt aus Liebeskummer" (1953). With successful movies like the marriage drama "Das Bekenntnis der Ina Kahr" ("Afraid to Love", 1954) and the dramatic dancer story "Rosen für Bettina" ("Ballerina", 1956), both directed by G.W. Pabst, Müller advanced to one of the great audience favourites of the 1950s. She had further successes among others as a noblewoman in Rolf Thiele's bestselling film adaptation "El Hakim" (1957), as a medical student in danger in the thriller "Dr. Crippen lebt" ("Doctor Crippen lives", 1958) and as the cheated on but loyal wife of the title character (Hardy Krüger) in the crime drama "Gestehen Sie, Dr. Corda" ("Confess, Dr. Corda", 1958).
Occasionally Elisabeth Müller also participated in English language film productions: For example, in the Hollywood melodrama "The Power and the Prize" (1956) she played an Austrian emigrant with whom Robert Taylor's main character fell in love (Maria Schell was originally intended for Müller's part). Director Robert Aldrich cast her as a Greek resistance fighter alongside Robert Mitchum in the British war film "The Angry Hills" (1959). During the shooting of Wolfgang Schleif's war film "Rommel ruft Kairo" (1959), in which she played a British lieutenant, Müller fell in love with cinematographer Kurt Grigoleit whom she married in 1960.
The romance "Alle Tage ist kein Sonntag", about the unexpected love happiness of a single mother, was Elisabeth Müller's last feature film in 1959. In the following year she had a big television success with the multi-parter "Am grünen Strand der Spree" (1960): In three of the five episodes she played the leading role of a mysterious woman who tells the eventful story of her family. "Am grünen Strand der Spree" was one of the early big hits of German television and was rerun many times over the years.
Eliabeth Müller returned to the stage from 1960 - reducing her work to a few roles a year in order to be able to devote herself to the upbringing of her two daughters (born in 1960 and 1962). She gave guest performances at the Schauspielhaus Zurich (1961), followed by the Stadttheater Basel, whose ensemble she was a member of from 1963 to 1965. She also made guest appearances at the Stadttheater Giessen, the Württembergische Staatstheater in Stuttgart and the Stadttheater Luzern. She also went on tour with various plays.
Müller accepted television roles only very rarely (not at all between 1967 and 1983). Her last appearance in front of the camera was in 1984 in the episode "Die Tote im Schlosspark" from the crime series "Der Alte".
Important stage roles of the 1980s and 1990s included Madame de Pfyffer in the world premiere of Eva Brunner's "Granit" at the Bernhard-Theater Zurich (1985) and "Frau" in Matthias Zschokke's "Die Alphabeten" at the Stadttheater Bern (1994).
On 11 December 2006 Elisabeth Müller died in a retirement home in Sempach, Switzerland (Canton Lucerne).