Lotte Palfi Andor was an aspiring Jewish stage actress in Germany and had to flee in 1934 with her first husband, the cutter (film editor) Victor Palfi, after the Nazis came to power. She played only bit parts in Hollywood, many of them uncredited. Her most memorable roles were in Casablanca (1942), where she was "the woman who has to sell her diamonds" in order to escape the Nazis and in Marathon Man (1976), where she was "the woman on 47th street," chasing a Nazi who is trying to escape with robbed diamonds.

In 1943, she married the German-American actor Wolfgang Zilzer (stage name: Paul Andor), who had been the "man with expired papers" in Casablanca (1942). The couple divorced in old age when the American-born Zilzer wanted to die in Germany and his wife refused to return to her native country.

She died on 07/08/1991 in New York City after a long illness.