The star in the nunnery

Dolores Hart gave up Hollywood for God, said Maureen Dowd in The New York Times. Hart shot to stardom when she was just 18, making her movie debut in the 1957 Elvis Presley vehicle Loving You. More leading roles followed, but by 1959, Hart was feeling fatigued by fame. A friend suggested she take a break at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut. “I said, ‘Nuns? I don’t want to go anyplace where there’s nuns,’” she recalled. “My friend said, ‘Just try it, they’re contemplative and they won’t talk.’” Eventually, Hart gave in. She loved the simplicity of the abbey, and four years later—after appearing in hit movies like Where the Boys Are and Come Fly With Me—she joined the order. “I wasn’t [leaving Hollywood] because I didn’t love it. It was just something I knew God was asking.” Life in the nunnery, she soon realized, involved more than quiet contemplation. “I had no idea it was going to mean singing seven times a day, working in the garden, 10 people in one bathroom.” Today, Mother Dolores has one luxury: a TV, which she uses to watch the latest Hollywood releases. But she avoids her own films. “That thrill is gone,” says Hart. “I know what I have here is the best thing I will ever have.”

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