Lilia Skala (November 28, 1896 — December 18, 1997) was an Austrian-American actress.

Skala was born in Vienna, Austria. In the late 1930s, she was forced to flee her Nazi-occupied homeland with her equally-Jewish husband, Eric Pollack, and their two young sons. Skala and her husband managed to escape (at different times) from Austria to England, and eventually settled in the USA.

Lilia Skala appeared on countless television shows and serials from 1952 to 1985, and as Grand Duchess Sophie kept company on Broadway with Ethel Merman in Call Me Madam not too many years after toiling in a Queens zipper factory as a non-English-speaking refugee from Austria. The family later moved to Englewood, New Jersey.

She was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for her most famous role as the Mother Superior in Lilies of the Field opposite Oscar-winning Sidney Poitier. Skala also appeared in Ship of Fools, Charly, Eleanor and Franklin, Roseland, Flashdance and House of Games

She died in Bay Shore, New York, of natural causes at age 101. Her life is the subject of an eponymous one-woman play Lilia! The play is written and performed by her granddaughter, Libby Skala.

Born and raised in Vienna, Austria, Lilia Skala would become a star on two continents. In pre-World War II Austria she starred in famed Max Reinhardt's stage troupe, and in post-war America she would become a notable matronly, award-worthy character star on Broadway and in films. Forced to flee her Nazi-occupied homeland with her Jewish husband and two young sons in the late 1930s, Lilia and her family managed to escape (at different times) to England. In 1939, practically penniless, they immigrated to the US, where she sought menial labor in New York's garment district. Lilia quickly learned English and worked her way back to an acting career, this time as a sweet, delightful, thick-accented Academy Award, Golden Globe and Emmy nominee. She broke through the Broadway barrier in 1941 with "Letters to Lucerne", followed by a featured role in the musical "Call Me Madam" with Ethel Merman. In the 1950s she did an extensive tour in "The Diary of Anne Frank" as Mrs. Frank, and performed in a German-language production of Kurt Weill's "The Threepenny Opera." Lilia became a familiar benevolent face on TV in several early soap operas, including "Claudia: The Story of a Marriage" (1952). She won her widest claim to fame, however, as the elderly chapel-building Mother Superior opposite Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field (1963), for which she won both Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. That led to more character actress work in films, most notably as the dog-carrying Jewish lady in the star-studded Ship of Fools (1965) and as Jennifer Beals (I)' elderly German friend in Flashdance (1983). On TV she played Eva Gabor's Hungarian mother in "Green Acres" (1965) and earned an Emmy nomination for her work in the popular miniseries Eleanor and Franklin (1976) (TV)). Lilia died at the ripe old age of 98.