Nearly 50 years after leaving Tinseltown to become a cloistered Benedictine nun, Mother Dolores Hart, who starred in films alongside the likes of Elvis Presley and Walter Matthau during her acting career, is returning to Hollywood to appear at the Academy Awards next Sunday. And she’ll be wearing her religious habit.
Mother Dolores, 73, is the focus of “God Is the Bigger Elvis”, an HBO documentary nominated in the best documentary short category.
The film documents Hart’s unusual journey from starring in dozens of Hollywood films to becoming Prioress of the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Conn., where she acts as spiritual counselor to 38 cloistered nuns, Sojourners reports.
“It will be so nice to be back at the Oscars. It’s such a fun night,” Hart told USA Today. “The last time I was there was in 1959, when I was a presenter. This will be different.”
Back then, Hart was a 21-year-old rising starlet who had already starred in films alongside Elvis Presley, George Hamilton and Montgomery Clift, USA Today reported.
A few years later, she was at the peak of her acting career on the trail of a seven-figure contract, and was happily engaged to Los Angeles businessman Don Robinson.
But by then Hart’s feelings about Hollywood had already started to change, a shift that began some years before when she was performing in a Broadway play , Sojourner reported.
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