Louisa Moritz

Louisa Moritz (born Luisa Cira Castro Netto; September 25, 1936 – January 4, 2019) was a Cuban-American actress and lawyer.

After arriving in New York from Cuba, she became a film and television actress, then earned a law degree.

She is best known for her roles in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the television show Love, American Style.

Moritz was born in Havana, where she worked as an accountant.

She later shaved 10 years off her true age, adopting 1946 as her year of birth.

To avoid association with Fidel Castro, to whom she was distantly related, she adopted the last name Moritz after seeing the Hotel St. Moritz in New York City.

Owing to the political upheaval of the late 1950s she left Cuba and moved to New York, arriving on July 15, 1960, aged 23.

Unable to speak English when she first moved to the United States in 1960, Moritz started acting in commercials in the 1960s.

Her first film was The Man from O.R.G.Y. in 1970.

Moritz generally played ditzy blondes, appearing in numerous films, of which the best known was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975 as the prostitute Rose, and in TV shows, including Happy Days, M*A*S*H, and Love, American Style, where she was a regular.

Moritz later studied law at the University of West Los Angeles and Abraham Lincoln University.

In 1982, Moritz had a role in The Last American Virgin as Carmela.

She was admitted to the California Bar in 2004.

According to her publicist, she was at the top of her class and won the American Jurisprudence Bancroft Whitney Prize for Contracts.

In November 2014, Moritz became one of the first women to accuse Bill Cosby, claiming Cosby sexually assaulted her in the green room of The Tonight Show in 1971.

After Cosby accused her of lying, she sued him for defamation.

Her lawyer planned to continue the lawsuit after her death.

On June 25, 2015, Moritz was suspended from the State Bar of California.

On October 1, 2017.

She was disbarred for failure to comply with terms set out in her previous disciplinary actions and to respond to the California Bar.

Moritz also invested in real estate, owning a hotel in Beverly Hills that she renamed the Beverly Hills St. Moritz, and produced self-defense programs for TV.

After being injured in a fall during a visit to Washington, D.C., Moritz died in a hospital in Los Angeles, aged 82, on January 4, 2019, of natural causes.