Laurence Olivier considered Wessely one of the greatest actresses of the
twentieth century.
Bette Davis was known to have studied Wessely's film performances.
Theatre actress at the famous Burgtheater in Vienna from 1953 to 1987.
She retired from acting shortly after her husband's death.
As she appeared on antisemitic propaganda movies, she was criticized
later by Austrian intellectuals. Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek considered
Heimkehr (1941) the worst Nazi propaganda movie of all and called Wessely "the
prototype of an actress in the Third Reich".