Elizabeth Johnson

The Countess is a fictional vampire and one of the main characters featured in the FX Network television series American Horror Story. She is associated with season five of the show, billed under the heading of "Hotel", and was played by actress and pop star Lady Gaga.

Overview
Elizabeth, known mostly as "The Countess", was a vampire who lived in the penthouse of the Hotel Cortez in Los Angeles, California in the mid 2010s. She was the lover of Donovan, whom she often accompanied on group sex murder sprees. The Countess also had a keen interest in the vampire children that had been living in the hotel at the time.

Biography
The woman who would one day become known as the Countess was born in the year 1904. As a young woman, she was turned into a vampire by a being whom she would claim was "even more beautiful" than she. Elizabeth always craved the spotlight, and took pleasure in the decadence each new age provided her. During the 1970s, she was the veritable queen of the Disco scene.

The Countess first encountered Donovan in 1994 when she found his prone body lying in one of the hotel rooms after he had overdosed on heroin. Donovan's mother, Iris, found her leaning over him. In 2015, the Countess and Donovan went to an outdoor screening of the 1922 silent film classic Nosferatu. The Countess enticed a young nearby couple to return to the Hotel Cortez with them where they engaged in passionate group sex. At the literal climax of the encounter, the Countess used her finger blade to slice the young man's throat open, then drank his blood, while Donovan did likewise to the young woman.

The Countess met Will Drake, the new owner of the Hotel Cortez in her penthouse suite during a real estate showing of the hotel. She also met Will's young son, Lachlan. While Will conducted business, the Countess took Lachlan on a special tour, showing him a secret room where vampire children were playing vintage 1980s-era video games. One of the hotel's captives, a Swedish tourist named Vendela, tried to escape from the hotel (with some assistance from Hypodermic Sally). She ran straight into the Countess who sliced her throat open with her finger-blade.

Will Drake hosted a fashion runway show in the hotel and Elizabeth and Donovan attended it in their most lavish attire. During the show, the Countess took interest in an irritated model named Tristan Duffy. She used her power to intensify his emotional state, making him lash out at one of the guests. She remarked to Donovan how she could feel the rage inside of him.

She later met up with Tristan that same evening, after he had already suffered a harrowing encounter with the hotel's original owner, James March. The Countess offered him eternal youth and turned him into a vampire. Enamored with her new plaything, she dismissed Donovan, though she claimed that she actually did love him.

The Countess is later critically wounded by Liz Taylor when Liz and Iris storm into her room and open fire, but The Countess is saved through the efforts of Sally and a blood donation from two of her "children" who die in the process. The Countess is confronted by Ramona Royale, who she leaves in charge of the hotel during her leave and requests that she have one last night of sex with her as she feels there is nothing left for her there now that her "children" and Donovan are dead. As she goes to leave on the elevator, she is shot multiple times by John Lowe hoping to fill his "Thou Shalt Not Kill" slot on his trophy case and he beheads her, using the head as his trophy. The Countess later becomes a ghost must to the chagrin of Hazel Evers, who was in love with March and hoped that they could be together in death.

Notes & Trivia



 * Grammy-award winning pop star Lady Gaga was the first celebrity cast to appear on season five of American Horror Story. No other details relating to the show were released at that time, but Gaga revealed in a tweet that the show would sport the serial name, "Hotel".


 * The Countess did not possess fangs like a traditional vampire. Her preferred means of consuming blood was through the use of a silver glove with a razor tip upon one finger, which she would use to slice open the throats of her victims and then drink their blood.
 * In the Hotel Cortez penthouse suite, the Countess had a pink neon sign hung on the wall which read, "Why aren't we having sex yet?".


 * Also in Elizabeth's suite was a collection of vintage vinyl records, most of which were jazz.


 * The Disco scene of the 1970s is the Countess' favorite time era.


 * Lady Gaga won the award for the category of Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television at the 2016 Golden Globes Awards ceremony for her work on American Horror Story: Hotel.