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Lore Stefanek was born in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 1943 and grew up in Vienna, Austria. After graduating from high school, she began studying acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna in 1961, graduating in 1964. Already during her studies she received an engagement at the Landestheater Linz. In Germany she was engaged at the Stadttheater Pforzheim from 1966 to 1968, followed by the Städtische Bühnen Heidelberg (until 1970), the Staatstheater Braunschweig and the Staatstheater Darmstadt (until 1972).
From 1972 to 1979 Stefanek belonged to the ensemble of the Schauspiel Frankfurt. Her most prominent roles there included Frau John in Hauptmann's "Die Ratten" (1973), Jokaste in Sophocles' "King Oedipus" and Ismene in "Antigone" (both 1979). Stefanek made her debut as a theatre director in 1979 with Jean Genet's "The Maids", also at Schauspiel Frankfurt.
Despite her successes in Frankfurt, Stefanek moved to the Schauspielhaus Bochum in 1979, where she remained until 1984. After that she worked as a freelance actress and director until 2008, with engagements and directing work at the Hamburg Schauspielhaus, the Stadttheater Basel, the Theater Oberhausen, the Landestheater Darmstadt, the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin and the Berliner Volksbühne, among others. She also taught at the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst 'Ernst Busch' in Berlin from 1993 to 2001.
During all these years, Lore Stefanek was seen on television almost only in the context of stage recordings. Her TV supporting roles in the milieu and character study "Schnelles Geld" ("Easy Money", 1981), the Strindberg biopic "Das Gehirn zu Pferde" ("The Brain on Horseback", 1986, directed by Hans Neuenfels) and the entrepreneurial story "Das Millardenspiel" ("The Billion Dollar Game", 1988, directed by Peter Keglevic) remained rare exceptions. It was not until the 2010s that she appeared somewhat more frequently in television productions. For example, she took on roles in episodes of the series' "Unser Charly" (2012), "Notruf Hafenkante" (2016) and "Der Usedom-Krimi" (2020), and was part of the ensemble of the TV movie "Ein Sommer an der Moldau" ("A Summer at the Moldau", 2020). Stefanek had a striking role in Paolo Sorrentino's TV two-parter "The New Pope" (IT/FR/ES 2020), as a wealthy lawyer who pays a woman to have sex with her son who suffers from hypertrichosis. The following year, she portrayed the Queen Mother in the Princess Diana biopic "Spencer" (DE/UK/US 2021).
But Stefanek's main field of activity remained the theatre, with long engagements at Schauspiel Frankfurt, Staatsschauspiel Dresden and Berlin's Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz. In 2021 she appeared on stage under the direction of Claus Peyman in "Der Deutsche Mittagstisch" and "Der König stirbt" at Vienna's Theater in der Josefstadt.
In 2023 Lore Stefanek had a late cinema role in Sylke Enders' tragicomedy "Schlamassel", as a former concentration camp warden who is discovered by an ambitious newspaper intern.