Lovsky was born in Vienna,[1] daughter of Břetislav Lvovsky, a minor Czech opera composer[a] and his wife, Vallee, a cellist.

[citation needed] After the couple settled in Santa Monica, California, Lorre had not wished Lovsky to work, believing he should be the breadwinner and she should remain at home.

She made a name for herself playing roles such as the deaf-mute mother of Lon Chaney in Man of a Thousand Faces (1957) with James Cagney and as Apache Princess Saba in the 1955 film Foxfire starring Jane Russell and Jeff Chandler.

As she grew older, she was given dowager roles, such as a Spanish matriarch in an episode of Bonanza titled "The Spanish Grant" (1960) and Have Gun Will Travel titled "The Man Who Wouldn't Talk" (1958) (with Charles Bronson), Romany matriarchs, elderly Native American women such as in the Wagon Train episode "A Man Called Horse", expatriate Russian princesses, and a role as the widowed mother of Reinhard Schwimmer, one of the victims in the film The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967).

She delivers the final confirmation to Edward G. Robinson's character Sol about Soylent Green's true ingredient.