Romy Schneider – great actress

Romy Schneider was a German-French actress, star of the Austrian, German and French cinema. She is one of the most famous German actresses of the XX century who has earned international success and fame.
Rosemarie Magdalena Albach was born on September 23, 1938 in Vienna. Her mother was a German film star Magda Schneider, her father was a hereditary Austrian actor Wolf Albach-Rhett. Her paternal grandmother, Rosa Albach-Retty, had been a famous Vienna stage actress of an earlier era.
Romy and her younger brother Wolf-Dieter were brought up by grandparents. Their parents didn’t see the children very often. They broke up in 1943 and finally divorced in 1945. Romy’s father married the Austrian actress Trude Marlen in 1947, and Magda Schneider married restaurateur Hans Herbert Blatzheim in 1953.
As a teen, Schneider attended a school in Salzburg, Austria, where she performed in plays and participated in several sports. Her ambition was to become a painter.

At the age of 15 Romy made her debut in film. She played with her mother Magda Schneider in When the White Lilacs Bloom Again (1953) and March of the Emperor (1955).
In 1955-1957 Romy starred as the Austrian Empress Elizabeth in Ernst Marishka’s trilogy Sissi and achieved international recognition.
In 1958 she starred in a movie Christine, about romantic intrigues at the 1906 Viennese court. Romy co-starred Alain Delon, one of France’s top leading men at the time. The pair fell in love, and upon their engagement Schneider left Germany and settled in Paris with him.

In 1963, Schneider appeared in the US film The Cardinal and for the role she was awarded the Golden Globe Award.
In 1966, Romy wed actor and director Harry Meyen-Haubenstock, with whom she had a son, but they were divorced by 1975.
In 1969 Schneider starred with Alain Delon in the film The Swimming Pool.
Schneider made a few films in English, including Orson Welles’s lauded adaptation of the Franz Kafka novel The Trial.
In the 1970s, Romy was at the peak of her acting career and became one of the most successful actresses of French cinema of the time.
In 1975, Schneider made a film with Claude Chabrol, Dirty Hands.
In 1977, she appeared in her first German production in nearly two decades, Group Portrait with Lady.

In 1977, Schneider gave birth to a second child, Sarah, with her new husband, photographer Daniel Biasini.
Her 14-year-old son died after climbing over the iron gate of their garden. She underwent a serious kidney operation and died of heart failure in her Paris home on May 29, 1982.
Her last film The Passer-by of Sans-Souci was released in 1982, a few weeks before the death of the actress.
Posthumously, Schneider became an icon in Europe, the symbol of an era when women performers began to take on more daring, provocative roles.
In 2008, Schneider was posthumously awarded the prize Cesar for outstanding achievements in cinema.

Romy Schneider – great actress