Eve Austin

Eve Austin is an award-winning Actress and Producer known for Junction, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

Lola Does Manhattan, and American Fango. 

She’s won over 30 Best Actress awards and awards for her work in over 40 film festivals. On top of all that, she has had a happy marriage.

But it wasn’t always a life of awards and happy homes. 

Her parents, who fled Nazi Germany, were excessive overprotectiveness, which led them to discourage her from pursuing a career in acting. Her husband, while also protective, would eventually encourage her to pursue her passion but she delayed her acting debut until later than most artists.

Who and where is she today? What has she learned and what can you learn from her story?

Let’s find out.

@robinlaneisalwaysright

@theeveaustin1

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome back to the second episode of How We Love. I'm Robin Lane, psychotherapist, and together you and I will continue exploring the many ranges of love, be they romantic, familial, platonic, and most especially self-love, and how in one way or another, love is always part of our survival story. Now joining me today is actress Eve Austin, whose life reads like an epic, marked by daring escapades, daring escapes, incredible triumphs, and whose life has run the gamut of every kind of love. Welcome, Eve Austin. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. So, Eve, I know that you've had a successful marriage and children and a career, but I want to go to your backstory because your backstory is how you got here to the United States of America, and it starts with your mom and your dad escaping the Nazis, correct? That is correct. You want to talk about your mom's story?

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Let's start with her. Okay. So my mom was uh born in Vienna, and um at the time the war came, she was a student. Her parents her uh were were at home, and uh we they didn't have the kind of communication that students would have. And my mother tried to get her parents to leave with her. This was before right before Kristallnacht in uh Vienna, and her parents refused to go. They said nothing is gonna happen here. Your father, meaning my grandfather, was uh on the side of the Germans in World War I, and no one is gonna disturb them. It has nothing to do with us being Jewish. So my mother knew there was imminent danger, and what she decided to do was to escape Vienna without telling her parents and do it with two students that she studied with. She was studying to be a radiology nurse. And what they did was in fact go through the borders of Yugoslavia, which at the time was not taken over, and they were hidden by farmers on the way that you had to pay to get them to take care of you so you wouldn't uh get caught. Uh, from Yugoslavia, she found uh boats that were basically tin cans and they were not legal uh to get go on a the long journey by ship to what is now Israel. From Yugoslavia. From Yugoslavia, which was across from Italy. And I think that the boat, you know, we don't have full records of this, but I think the boat actually left from Italy. I was researching that, but they don't have much because it was all legal, nothing was in the records. Um, there were 11 such ships that went. Some of them made it, some of them didn't. At times they had to switch mid-seas. I'm not sure how long the journey was for her, uh, but she was very young. She was like 19, and the idea of escape for her was to rescue her parents once she got to uh freedom and uh try, you know, marry someone um that was local to the area so that she could have her parents brought legally uh to what would become Israel. And so tell me what happened. Well, uh she was picked up by an underground group called a Yergun at the time. They gave uh they gave all the passengers who they had to swim to shore. The younger people had to swim to shore, and the older people went in boats, and they were picked up by this underground group and taken to like an auditorium-like uh place, and given clothing and uh given jobs where they had to go through uh areas that were that they were shot at. So there were buses um that were had covered windows, metal that went over the windows. So that who was shooting at the me. Well, it it it was uh the conflict of of uh the Arab world and and what is now Israel. Uh and it there were also the British uh British mandate was happening at the time, and the Brit Britain had rule over the area. So it was really Britain that didn't want them in. Britain didn't want them in, and neither did uh the crossing of borders of different lands that were not uh Jewish lands at the time.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Well, it must have been quite she must have been quite something, your mom.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

She must have been frightened and and disturbed, but at 19, I guess you have a lot more bravery than you do when you're later on, but you never know. Her whole life was about survival. Um so then what happened? Well, she remained in uh what would become Israel 11 years later. Uh she started getting there were letters coming through the Red Cross uh that were like postcards, and you could every six months get some kind of notice during the war about you know your relatives, and they were open. You had to write, you couldn't write any hidden messages or anything like that. So for the first two or three years, she heard from her parents every six months, and then she would write back on the back of the postcard that uh, you know, that everything is well, not to worry, etc., that type of thing. I actually have some of that those documents still.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Oh my goodness! That's museum quality.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

It is, and I I I'm planning on actually uh donating it to, I haven't decided where yet, but donating it to uh museums that um carry Jewish history, you know, because it is a part of history and it is true. Um so while she was there, while she was in Israel, uh well, wasn't Israel yet, but while she was there, she um met a lot of people. She worked and she met a man who was a uh, you know, he was a native to the area, and they married, and uh then she applied for her parents to come back uh or to to you know to get them to to the the land. And um to get them to Israel. Well, it wasn't Israel then, but yes. So uh what happened was she the Red Cross letter stopped. There was no more communication with the parents, and she received a letter from the British mandate saying, Yes, you're married to someone uh from here, but you're not uh you're not from here and you have to leave the country, which no, and which she did not do. Uh she stayed to go into hiding? Pretty much, pretty much. Uh I mean you the the the thing is is basically her life was in danger. I mean, anybody that emigrated uh during that time, their life was in danger. Nobody was uh, you know, friendly, there was no friendly fire there, you know. Um, so she remained there. She eventually became divorced. Why? Why did she get divorced? Uh she had a lot of problems with this man's mother um that was treating her like she was the enough said.

unknown 7:58

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

No, it's not that's enough said.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Yeah, she needed to leave because she wanted to find out what had happened to her parents because those letters stopped. The only person that um she knew of that survived was her sister, who was 13 years older and who had escaped to England with her two little girls. Um, and once you you were able to get out of the before war started in Vienna, you were able to still, if you had papers that you could work somewhere else and someone was sponsoring you, you could still get out. And that's how she her sister got out and settled in England. Pardon me? Did your mom go to England? My mother went to England to find out what happened to her parents. While she was in England, she met my father, and my father told her that because she didn't have a visa, and at this point it Israel was in existence, she didn't have a visa to go to other countries besides England. So he offered to go into Vienna and see what he could find out about her parents. While that was happening, her visa expired. Uh, so now she was basically stranded in England. My father went to find what happened to the parents. In those days, they they did not have the records. We have since found the records of uh, when I say we, I have found the records. My mother passed away without knowing whatever happened to her parents.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Oh, how awful.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

So she lived with that the rest of her life, you know, basically, that's horrible. It's beyond comprehension for people like like me that have had it so wonderful in this country, uh when we finally got here. Um the um so she she was stranded there, she had her sister, uh, you know, there were ways to hide, I suppose, but the and this was you know after after the war, uh after the camps were liberated. Uh in the meanwhile, um she had this um torrid love story with my dad. And and they together moved to Germany, where a lot of people moved to where they had no home. What was your dad like, my daughter my father was a an amazing um personality? He was a very outgoing man, people loved him. He used to sing and he used to dance and he used to be a lover of life and quite a player in life. And um that's where you get your entertainment background from, you think? You know, I don't think it was my mom. You know, she she was very after, you know, after all these adventures which go further than this, um, she was really a psychologically a total mess. And she was all about security and wanting to make sure that she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which they didn't diagnose back then. Of course they didn't, they didn't even know what it was. Um she was just uh till the right for the end of her life, she never recovered from this emotionally um or even physically.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Um, my father and yet with with all that stress that she carried with her, your dad fell in love with her.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Well, she was a beautiful woman and a beautiful soul. There was nothing not to fall in love with. Well, men don't fall in love with souls. I I have not found that to be. But he saw he saw that she was a kind, warm, loving person. She must have been very pretty. She was gorgeous, she was absolutely gorgeous. Um, and you know, she did not look, she looked like she could have been German. She was blonde, blue haired, blue-eyed. Um, yeah. And uh yeah, she was very beautiful and she she loved she loved people, she just wanted to do good for people, and she had a very soft heart for anyone that went through this type of um marginalization, whatever the race or creed was um at the time.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

I think I think the worst thing about not knowing what happened to your loved ones is what you imagine.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Well, she imagined that they were gone, but at that time she didn't know for sure.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

What I'm saying to you is what you imagine, because you imagine the most awful things.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Of course, and then on top of it, she's the one that escaped despite them telling her, you know, that she should stay there. Yeah, that's survivor guilt on top of everything.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

But the marriage was what so what how did the marriage go?

SPEAKER_01 12:52

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

How was the marriage?

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Uh the marriage was an interesting marriage. Uh, my father, being a player, uh kind of continued his shenanigans a bit. Um, and he also escaped, my dad escaped from uh Vienna to England around the same time, but there's a big age difference, and he got his entire family into England, actually had to go in front of a magistrate to be able to stay because they were kind of stowaways on a ship. And he managed to get them to stay, and he opened a restaurant with his first wife, and he had a good life and had children before he met my mom.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

And as far as hold on, so when he met your mom, he was married?

SPEAKER_01 13:37

He was separated from his wife, he wasn't divorced.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Um that Batman people got divorced.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Well, she wasn't eager to give him a divorce, especially after she knew that he had someone else. Um, my dad was always a player, so he was asked to leave the house by his first wife, and then my mother came along, and then she decided that she wanted him to come back, and it was kind of too late.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Um so it really girl, there's so much drama in your background.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

It's unbelievable. It really is, and you know, I can talk about it like normally because I wasn't there to witness this, you know. That's so much drama, so much trauma drama and trauma for the both of them.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Of course. So when did he finally get divorced and when did he and your mom start living together?

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Well, my parents started living together before they my father got divorced. Nobody did that back then. They just right, they just didn't. They didn't, but you know, under the trauma of war, it's amazing what people do.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Yeah, I see uh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

And uh so no, it was completely inappropriate, you know, to so to speak, although they brought me up as very appropriate that were very careful that I learned the right things, you know, when I put quotes around that.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

So where did you where did were you born?

SPEAKER_01 15:04

I was born. And um during that time, people had to find Jewish people had to find any way they could to make a living and to start a new life. And there were many Jews that emigrated uh to different countries, such as Germany at the time was was a good one. Everybody spoke the language and there was a community of Jewish people there.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Was that when you were born in Germany?

SPEAKER_01 15:28

I was born in Germany. I was born five years after their um love affair began.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Were they legally married at that time?

SPEAKER_01 15:39

They were legally married by the time I was born. Okay. So you were born in Germany and then and then what? And then um the idea was to be able to emigrate to the United States, which um was a very rough road because you know they it it was very um Jewish people couldn't really emigrate. They had a quota for how many Jewish people could come into the country.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Do you know what that quota was?

SPEAKER_01 16:08

No, I do not. But I mean it's like a certain amount of people, but they were coming in from all over the world because nobody had a home.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Uh and and everybody was displaced. So when the when they but aside from the Jewish issue, it was also an issue in immigration at the time. Uh like Harry Truman was a president when he finally signed this quota because prior to that nobody was allowed in. Uh so the um the the journey to the U.S. had to do with going from my father to go from country to country, trying to find a way to get to the United States and get sponsored by someone in the US that he would be able to work for them. And that journey took 10 years. Oh my God. And um were you part of that? Were you going from country to country? I was going from country to country. I was very, you know, I was a baby. I didn't know. I would from the age of uh zero to the age of 10. I guess there's no age zero, but from the time I was born till I was 10, I lived, we went uh I lived in in Germany, in Vienna, in England, in Chile, and in Mexico. And finally from Mexico, my father found somebody to sponsor him, and we were able to come to the United States. And where did you go? I landed in Manhattan, in New York City, which is where I've stayed for the rest of my days. Pardon me? You remember that? I remember, yes, I remember vague things such as having to go to school in America, public school, um, where they graduated me to a grade higher than I should have been in, because I didn't speak English. I had no records from my schools. Um, I was in Chile for two years and in Mexico for four. So the the last six years, I was 10 when I got here. So when I from the time I was born to the time I was four, I was in all different countries, and then two years in Chile, four years in Mexico, which meant that I learned how to speak, I spoke German first and then Spanish. And when I came to America, we all had to learn English.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

No wonder you're so adaptive. When I think of your childhood and I think of mine, I feel like an idiot, you know. You shouldn't feel like an idiot. No wonder.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

I mean, you're so adaptive. Well, this is the thing. We were in the middle of real issues here. And and, you know, people that were in denial that were at risk were eliminated, like my grandparents. You know, we know now that they, I know now, my mother never learned that maybe it was better for her not to know, that they were around 1941, they were taken uh to um a camp in Latvia and eliminated. Uh, and so was the rest of my family, and pretty much everyone in my family from on both sides. You know, basically I would say 80% of my family was eliminated by the Nazis. Uh you have to do what you have to do to survive. But one of the biggest cautionary tales is the analogy that I make that people were in denial that nobody could ever do this to them. Jewish people were in denial. And now today, Jews are at risk again. And many people, especially in America, are in denial because they've never experienced this and they don't believe that it could happen.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

This is where we are in the world today.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Let's let's move on to that from that to your growing up and you're becoming, you're getting married. Yeah. So how did that come about?

SPEAKER_01 20:15

The biggest, the biggest issue as far as um uh having a life in America uh was the language problem, being a young girl, not feeling like part of the unit, because you know, kids are not nice. Uh if you're a partner. You had to feel like an outsider. I was very much felt like an outsider. Um, I I came, I went to school. My my parents started thriving a little bit more because my father had a job. Uh, I went to camp, all of it without speaking, you know, just learning English in that first year and an accent. I was fortunate enough to go to the High School of Art and Design. I had wanted to be an actress all my life, really. And my parents said How come? How come? So I didn't know why I wanted to be an actress. I just knew that I had to do this, and this was what I was meant to do. A lot of children don't know that, but they feel it. My parents said you cannot be an actress because you have to make a living and there's no way we can support you. So I went to art and design with a portfolio in order to become an art teacher, which is what my my parents wanted me to do. Um, many years later, you know, when not that many years later, but I went to college as an art student, and I my my dream was to get married and have children. Uh, I thought my dream of being an actress was gone. As it turned out, my parents uh uh ended up going back to Germany. I was alone here in the United States, and I had to find my way. So I started working uh very young. I went into advertising. Um, I actually became advertising. Director at Diane von Furstenberg in her first incarnation. And that's when I met my husband on a blind date. My husband was um, you know, perfect in terms of a good person with a lot of potential, with a nice education, who wanted to take care of me. And that safety that I needed was provided by him. I had my two children. Had to be terribly important at that time, that safety. It was monumental. There's no other way that I would have felt safe be based on my training, my background. Yeah. Um, and I had no siblings that I lived with, so I had no one except my parents.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

And they were gone, they were in another country.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Yeah. And um what happened was once I had my children and I had that dream, you know, happening, I started to go to uh to school to study to study acting. And I was in my 30s already when I started, and that was a while ago. And um I fully embraced the business. I fully embraced uh the the performance uh you know part of it. I became part of that community. I've never looked back and I have never regretted it.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

So of all of all of the people and things you've loved, one of the things you've loved the most is the theater, correct? Is acting.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

That is totally correct. I would say that it's a major passion that has never gone away, that has never died, and that has never failed me. That doesn't mean I get work all the time, but to be part of a community like this is a privilege and it's a noble profession, and it's something that I I find the kindest, most wonderful people are in this industry that are are artists. And uh that that basically tell them tell me about some of the acting work that you've done. Uh well, right now I have a film that's on uh Apple Plus and um Amazon and various other platforms. It's called In Fidelity. It's In Fidelity. Yes, it's two words, and it stars Chris Parnell from Saturday Night Live. It stars um uh Dennis Haysbert, uh people that we we really all know and love, uh Cara Buono, Willow Shields.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

And who do you play?

SPEAKER_01 24:30

I play the best friend of the character that Chris uh Parnell plays. I play a I'm kind of uh morphing into a um David Bowie type character. I play a style because you've seen me and you know me and you know my work, and that's not the usual that I play. But um, yeah, so that's that's what I play in that. I've also started creating my own content, and now uh that movie that I'm mentioning, I was executive producer of, and I'm moving into that world. So part of it is because I have a little bit more um um control, let's say, of the parts that I play, where I get cast, what I want to do. And basically, I want to spread love. You know, I want to spread love and healing and creativity in the world. And the only way I think I can do that is by creating my own.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Well, thank you. You are truly inspirational, and it's been a pleasure to have you on this.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Pleasure to have to have you have me on this, and thank you so much. Bye, Eve. Bye bye,