Let It Be Löwensohn

Vanities

The camera adores ELINA LOWENSOHN'S

chiseled features nearly as much as the tape recorder dotes on her mellifluous accent. Soulful and sexy on-screen, voluble and animated in person, the Romanian-born actress had a riveting scene in Schindler's List and even turned up as Jerry's date on Seinfeld. Still, it's with New York indies Hal Hartley and Michael Almereyda that she's been indelible. A melancholy porn star iff Hartley's Amateur, L6wen$ohn rules the lower-Manhattan night as a glamorously cowled vampire waif in Almereyda's just-released Nadja. Knowing little of Nosferatu before arriving in the U.S., she was destined to play Dracula s daughter—Lowensohn's grandmother was Transylvanian, and her late father served as Nicolae Ceausescu's minister of housing. Says the former East Village waitress, "Everything I've been in, I totally believe in it. That's a lot to be grateful for." We totally agree.

J. HOBERMAN