Greta Garbo

Greta Lovisa Gustafsson (18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990), later known as Greta Garbo, was a Swedish actress primarily known for her work in the United States during Hollywood's silent film period and part of its subsequent Golden Age. Born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden, she moved to Los Angeles, California in 1925 to develop her film career. She appeared in only 27 movies, yet she remains one of the most popular and recognizable Hollywood stars. The MGM marketing ploy "Garbo talks" became a catch-phrase of the 1930s. Her popularity with the Depression-era audiences allowed her to dictate the terms of her contract in 1932, and she became increasingly choosy about her roles. After 1941, she accepted no more roles, and retired to an apartment in New York City.
Regarded as one of the greatest and most inscrutable movie stars ever produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the Hollywood studio system, Garbo appeared in both the silent and the talkies era of film-making. She was one of the few silent movie actresses to successfully negotiate the transition to sound, which she achieved in Anna Christie (1930), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. She appeared twice as the fabled Anna Karenina, once in silent film, Love (1927), and again with Anna Karenina (1935), for which she received the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. She considered her 1936 performance as the courtesan Marguerite Gautier as her best performance and her role in Camille (1936) earned her a second Academy Award nomination. During the World War II era, MGM attempted to recast the somber and melancholy Garbo into a comic actress with Ninotchka (1939) and Two-Faced Woman (1941), both of which featured her unusually loud, comical, and singing. For Ninotchka, Garbo was again nominated for an Academy Award; Two-Faced Woman did well at the box office, but was a critical failure. Garbo received a 1954 Honorary Academy Award.
In her retirement, during which she became increasingly reclusive, she lived in New York City. A 1986 Sidney Lumet film, Garbo Talks, reflected the continuing popular obsession with the star. Until the end of her life, Garbo-watching became a sport among the paparazzi and the media, but she remained elusive. She died in 1990 at the age of 84 from pneumonia and renal failure.
In 1999, the AFI ranked Greta Garbo 5th on their list of All Time Female Screen Legends, after the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, and Ingrid Bergman.

1905–1920: Childhood and youth

Garbo was the third and youngest child of Anna Lovisa (née Karlsson) (1872–1944) – a homemaker and later employed at a jam factory – and Karl Alfred Gustafsson (1871–1920), an unskilled worker.Garbo's parents met in Stockholm, where her father made occasional trips from his home in the neighboring but much smaller Frinnaryd to the mainland. He decided he wished to be independent and made the decision to move to the city, eventually worked various odd jobs and married Garbo's mother, who had recently relocated from Högsby. Her siblings were Sven Alfred (1898–1967) and Alva Maria (1903–1926). The family lived at Blekingegatan No. 32 in Södermalm, a working-class district of Stockholm regarded as the city's slum, in a small, cold-water tenement apartment. She would later recall:

It was eternally gray — those long winter's nights. My father would be sitting in a corner, scribbling figures on a newspaper. On the other side of the room my mother is repairing ragged old clothes, sighing. We children would be talking in very low voices, or just sitting silently. We are filled with anxiety, as if there is danger in the air. Such evenings are unforgettable for a sensitive girl. Where we lived, all the houses and apartments looked alike, their ugliness matched by everything surrounding us.

As a child, Garbo was daydreaming and shy. She hated school and did not play much, but was interested in theater from an early age and dreamt about becoming an actress In June 1919 she left school, and never returned.}}  and typical for a Swedish working-class girl at that time, did not pursue further education; she would later express an inferiority complex about this fact. Some private letters describe her as narcissistic, possessive, and supposedly ashamed of her father, a latrine cleaner, and suggest that Garbo suffered from periods of depression.
Despite living in near poverty, Garbo maintained her moonstruck attitude toward the stage: she played amateur theatre with her friends and frequented the Mosebacke Theater. Additionally, she later admitted to a childhood crush on Carl Brisson and would cite Naima Wifstrand as a role model.
Alva, Garbo's sister, worked in an insurance office as a stenographer, and Sven, Garbo's brother, eventually married and brought his wife and their only child, a daughter who would later be known as Gray. The family of seven continued to remain in a three-bedroom apartment. The mood at home became further strained when Garbo's father, to whom she was extremely close, began missing work — he had worked odd jobs as street cleaner, grocer, factory worker and a butcher's assistant — and when in winter 1919 the Spanish flu had spread throughout Stockholm and Karl Alfred fell ill and lost his job, Garbo stayed at home looking after her father and brought him to the hospital for weekly treatments. In 1920, when she was 14 years old, her father died.

1920–1924: Early career

Her first job was as a soap-lather girl in a barbershop. One day a young man by the name of Kristian Bergström, son of the founder of PUB department store, Paul U. Bergström, entered the barbershop for a shave. He eventually offered her a job as a clerk at PUB. She accepted the offer and started to work for PUB in July 1920, where she also modeled for newspaper advertisements. She appeared in two short film advertisements, the first for PUB, and they were eventually seen by comedy director Erik Arthur Petschler. He gave her a part in his upcoming film Peter the Tramp (1922).
From 1922 to 1924, Greta Gustafsson studied at The Royal Dramatic Theatre's Acting School in Stockholm. There, she met director Mauritz Stiller who worked as a teacher. He trained her in cinema acting technique, gave her the stage name Greta Garbo, and cast her in a major role in the silent film The Saga of Gosta Berling in 1924, a dramatization of the famous novel by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf, where she played opposite Swedish film actor Lars Hanson. She followed this appearance with a part in the 1925 German film Die freudlose Gasse (The Joyless Street or The Street of Sorrow) directed by G. W. Pabst and co-starring Asta Nielsen.
She and Stiller were brought to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by Louis B. Mayer when The Saga of Gosta Berling caught his attention. On viewing the film during a visit to Berlin, Mayer was impressed with Stiller's direction, but was more taken with Garbo's acting and screen presence.^[According to Mayer's daughter, Irene Mayer Selznick, with whom he screened the film, he was impressed by the gentleness and expression that emanated from her eyes.

1925–1929: Silent films

Garbo with Ricardo Cortez in Torrent (1926)

Stiller and Garbo arrived in Hollywood in September 1925, and although expecting to work with Stiller on her first film, Garbo within a month was cast for The Torrent, displacing her senior by 10 years, Aileen Pringle, in the role of Leonora opposite Ricardo Cortez under the direction of Monta Bell. The Torrent did well at the box office despite the fact that it was rather coolly received by the trade press, and Garbo received good reviews. The success led Irving Thalberg, who at first had pronounced Garbo as "absolutely unusable" to cast her in a similar vamp role in another Ibáñez adaption, The Temptress, this time getting top billing opposite Antonio Moreno, and now having her mentor Stiller, who persuaded her to take the part, as the director. For Garbo, who didn't like the script any more than she had the first one, and for Stiller, The Temptress was a harrowing experience; Garbo remembered it as a picture associated with doom: on the fourth day of production she received a telegram from Stockholm informing her of the death of her sister Alva at age 23 (MGM did not permit Garbo to return to Sweden for the funeral), and shortly thereafter Stiller, who spoke little English, had difficulties with adapting to the studio system,and did not get on with Moreno, was replaced with Fred Niblo. Reshooting The Temptress was an expensive proposition and even though it became one of the top-grossing films of the 1926–27 season, with nearly $1 million in receipts, it became the only Garbo film of the period to lose money. But Garbo herself got very good reviews, and it gave MGM another star.

During filming of Die freudlose Gasse (1925)

The most well-received of Garbo's silent movies were Flesh and the Devil (1926), Love (1927) and The Mysterious Lady (1928). She starred in the first two with the popular leading man John Gilbert. Garbo played the role of Iris Storm in "The Green Hat," a role made famous by stage actress Katharine Cornell.^{[54][relevant? – discuss]} Having achieved enormous success as a silent movie star, Garbo feared that her Swedish accent might impair her work in sound, and delayed the shift for as long as possible. MGM on their part made a slow changeover to sound, thus her last silent movie, The Kiss (1929), was the last film MGM made without dialogue, although it used a soundtrack with music and sound effects only. There was some speculation that Garbo was bisexual, that she had intimate relationships with women as well as with such men as John Gilbert. She and Gilbert starred together for the first time in the classic Flesh and the Devil (1926). Their on-screen erotic intensity soon translated into an off-camera romance, and by the end of production Garbo had moved in with Gilbert. Gilbert allegedly proposed to her three times before she accepted. When a marriage was finally arranged in 1926, she failed to show up at the ceremony.
Garbo was introduced to stage and screen actress Lilyan Tashman at a tennis party in 1927 and allegedly had an affair with her. The two became inseparable companions who went shopping, swimming, and to Tashman's garden cottage.

1930–1939: Queen of MGM

Garbo is among the actors and actresses who successfully made the transition to talkies; publicized with the slogan "Garbo Talks!" her voice was first heard on screen in Anna Christie (1930), a film adaptation of the 1922 play by Eugene O'Neill. The movie was a huge success. In 1931 Garbo made a German version of the movie. Garbo next appeared as the World War I spy Mata Hari (1931); her leading man screen lover Ramon Novarro. She was subsequently part of an all-star cast in Grand Hotel (1932) in which she played a Russian ballerina.

Garbo and Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka (1939)

In 1931, Garbo befriended the writer and socialite Mercedes de Acosta, introduced to her by the author Salka Viertel. According to de Acosta, the pair ultimately began a sporadic and volatile romance, punctuated by long periods during which Garbo ignored her and disregarded her many love letters. After about a year, the relationship ended, but they maintained contact. Following de Acosta's claims about her many trysts with Garbo, in her controversial autobiography Here Lies the Heart in 1960, the pair were permanently estranged.
After a contract dispute with MGM, she eventually signed a new contract with the studio in July 1932, which gave her more control over her parts and her private life. Garbo continued to demonstrate great loyalty to John Gilbert and insisted that he appear with her in 1933's Queen Christina (1933), despite the objection of MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer; Laurence Olivier had originally been chosen for the role. In 1935, David O. Selznick wanted to cast her as the dying heiress in Dark Victory, but she insisted on doing Tolstoy's Anna Karenina instead. Although Anna Karenina was arguably one of her most famous roles, Garbo regarded her role as the doomed courtesan in George Cukor's Camille (1936), opposite Robert Taylor, as her finest performance.
Garbo was nominated four times for an Academy Award for Best Actress; in 1930 for Anna Christie and for Romance,^[67][68] but might have been a victim of MGM's inner politics: she lost out to Irving Thalberg's wife Norma Shearer who won for The Divorcee. In 1937 Garbo was nominated for Camille but lost out to Luise Rainer who won for The Good Earth. Max Breen was among those critics indignant that Greta Garbo's performance in Camille had been overlooked in favor of Rainer. Finally in 1939 Garbo was nominated for Ninotchka but again came away empty-handed: Gone With the Wind swept the major awards, including Best Actress, which went to Vivien Leigh.
The Swedish royal medal, Litteris et Artibus, awarded to people who have made important contributions to culture, especially music, dramatic art or literature, was presented to Garbo in January 1937. She then starred opposite Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka (1939), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Ninotchka attempted to lighten Garbo's somber and melancholy image. The comedy, Garbo's first, was marketed with the tagline, "Garbo laughs!", playing off the tagline for Anna Christie, "Garbo talks!"

1940–1948: Last films and retirement

The follow-up film, George Cukor's Two-Faced Woman (1941), attempted to capitalize on Garbo's restyled war-time image by casting Garbo in a romantic comedy, where she played a double role that featured her dancing, and tried to portray her as an ordinary girl. The film, Garbo's last, was a critical, although not a commercial, failure, and Garbo referred to the ill-fated Two-Faced Woman as "my grave". She was offered many roles over the years after that, and showed serious interest in about half a dozen—but in each case either she eventually turned the role down, or the projects failed.
During the 1940's, Garbo maintained a discreet liaison with Swedish industrialist John Hjelme-Lundberg who traveled on at least three occasions to New York to be with her. After his death, found among Hjelme-Lundberg's possessions was a box of silk scarves, evidently a gift from Garbo. Additionally, Hjelme-Lundberg kept an autographed photo of the actress with an inscription in their native Swedish: "Hjelme, with all my love, G" ("Hjelme, med all min älska, G."). According to the memoir written by dancer, model, and silent film actress Louise Brooks, she and Garbo had a brief liaison. Brooks described Garbo as masculine but a "charming and tender lover". In 1948, Garbo signed a contract for $200,000 with producer Walter Wanger, who had produced Queen Christina in 1933, to shoot a picture based on Balzac's La Duchesse de Langeais which Max Ophüls was slated to adapt and direct.Garbo made several screen tests, learned the script and in the summer of 1949 arrived in Rome, where the picture was to be filmed, but the plans for this film collapsed when financing failed to materialize, and in the end the project was abandoned. These screen tests for La Duchesse de Langeais—the last time Garbo stepped in front of a movie camera—were lost for 40 years, before resurfacing in someone's garage. Parts of the screen tests were included in the 2005 TCM documentary Garbo, and show her still radiant at age 43.

Personal life

Garbo filling out U.S. citizenship paperwork in 1950

Except for the very early days of her career, Garbo was reclusive; she seldom signed autographs,rarely attended social functions, answered no fan mail, and she gave few interviews. Her refusal to give interviews gave rise to the press reporter jargon "pulling a Garbo" or "going Garbo" referring to any such actions. In her 1928 Photoplay interview she said:

I have always been moody. When I was just a little child, as early as I can remember, I have wanted to be alone. I detest crowds, don’t like many people. I used to crawl into a corner and sit and think, think things over.

Her last interview was with the entertainment writer Paul Callan of the British newspaper Daily Mail during the Cannes Film Festival.^[when?] Meeting at the Hotel du Cap Eden Roc, Callan began his line of questioning with, "I wonder..." Garbo cut in with "Why wonder?" and stalked off,^{[citation needed]} making it one of the shortest interviews ever published.

With her mother Anna Gustafsson, she returns to Sweden in December 1939 for the first time since her arrival in Hollywood in 1925.

Garbo gradually withdrew from the entertainment world and moved to a secluded life in New York City, refusing to make any public appearances. She is often associated with her famous line, a line the American Film Institute in 2005 voted the 30th most memorable movie quote of all time, as the Russian ballerina Grusinskaya in Grand Hotel (1932):

I want to be alone (...) I just want to be alone

a theme echoed in several of her other roles, e.g. in The Single Standard (1929) where her character Arden Stuart 'spoke' the line: "I am walking alone because I want to be alone" and in Love (1927) where a title card read "I like to be alone". By the early 1930s the phrase was indelibly linked with Garbo's persona, but Garbo later commented:

I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said, 'I want to be let alone.' There is all the difference.

In a surprise interview granted to the press on board the liner Kungsholm in October 1938 in New York after Garbo had returned from her summer vacation in Europe partly spent in Ravello with conductor Leopold Stokowski, she was asked if she had enjoyed her vacation. Sighing huskily, Garbo replied, "You cannot have a vacation without peace and you cannot have peace unless left alone." Garbo neither married nor had children and she lived alone.
In his 1995 book Garbo: a biography Barry Paris relates Garbo's relationships—which were often just close friendships—with actor George Brent, conductor Leopold Stokowski, nutritionist Gayelord Hauser, photographer Cecil Beaton, and her manager George Schlee, husband of designer Valentina.

Final years and death

Gravestone of Greta Garbo

On 9 February 1951, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1953, she bought a seven-room apartment in New York City at 450 East 52nd Street, where she lived for the rest of her life. Although she occasionally jet-setted with some of the world's best known personalities—Aristotle Onassis and Cecil Beaton—she elected to live a private life. She was known for taking long walks through the city's streets dressed casually and wearing large sunglasses, always avoiding prying eyes, the paparazzi, and media attention. Garbo did, however, receive one last flurry of publicity when topless photos, taken with a long-range lens during her vacation in Antigua with her niece, Gray Reisfield, were published in People in 1976.
Despite Garbo's obvious wish for privacy, elements of the public remained obsessed with her, and until her death, Garbo sightings were considered sport for paparazzi. In 1974, pornographic filmmaker Peter De Rome tracked Garbo across New York and shot unauthorized footage of her for inclusion in his X-rated feature Adam & Yves. In the 1984 film, Garbo Talks, directed by Sidney Lumet, a son (Ron Silver)'s attempt to fulfill his dying mother's (Anne Bancroft) request by arranging for her to meet the Great Garbo reflected popular obsession with the star.
Garbo lived the last years of her life in relative seclusion. On 15 April 1990, aged 84, she died in New York Hospital as a result of pneumonia and renal failure. She had been successfully treated for breast cancer in 1984.
Garbo was cremated, and after a long legal battle, her ashes were finally interred in 1999 at Skogskyrkogården Cemetery just south of her native Stockholm. She invested very wisely, particularly in commercial property along Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. She left her entire estate, estimated at $20,000,000 USD, to her niece, Gray Reisfield.

Legacy

Robert E. Sherwood observed in 1929:

She is one of the most amazing, puzzling, most provocative characters of this extraordinary age. She definitely doesn't belong in the 20th century. She doesn't even belong in this world.

During Garbo's Hollywood career, the animated cartoons frequently caricatured her. These include from Warner Brothers:

• I've got to Sing a Torch Song (1933)
• Porky's Road Race (1937)
• Speaking of the Weather (1937)
• Porky's Five and Ten (1938)
• Malibu Beach Party (1940)
• Hollywood Steps Out (1941).

Among the Disney cartoons Garbo is caricatured in are:

• Mickey's Gala Premiere (1933)
• Mickey's Polo Team (1936)
• Mother Goose Goes Hollywood (1938)
• The Autograph Hound (1939).

For her contributions to cinema, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard, in a 1950 Daily Variety opinion poll Garbo was voted Best Actress of the Half Century, and she was once designated as the most beautiful woman who ever lived by the Guinness Book of World Records.^[] Garbo was awarded an Academy Honorary Award "for her unforgettable screen performances" in 1954. Garbo did not show up and the statuette was mailed to her home address.
Garbo received praise from many industry colleagues:

Her instinct, her mastery over the machine, was pure witchcraft. I cannot analyse this woman's acting. I only know that no one else so effectively worked in front of a camera. —Bette Davis

She had a talent that few actresses or actors possess. In close-ups she gave the impression, the illusion of great movement. She would move her head just a little bit and the whole screen would come alive — like a strong breeze that made itself felt. —George Cukor

Italian motion picture director Luchino Visconti had actively been working on a film adaptation of Proust's colossal work Remembrance of Things Past since 1969 with a breathtaking prospective cast including Silvana Mangano, Alain Delon, Helmut Berger, Charlotte Rampling, Laurence Olivier and Garbo in the small part of Maria Sophia, Queen of Naples. Reportedly Garbo went to Rome and did a color screen test for the role in 1971, and Visconti exclaimed:

I am very pleased at the idea that this woman, with her severe and authoritarian presence, should figure in the decadent and rarefied climate of the world described by Proust.

Visconti's dream of making his Proust film came closest to realization in 1971, but with its length of almost four hours, the budget turned out to be astronomical, and the project never came to fruition.
In her 1981 song, "Bette Davis Eyes", Kim Carnes makes a reference that the girl that is the subject of the song "got Greta Garbo stand off sights".
In November 1983, Garbo, age 78, was made a Commander of the Swedish Order of the Polar Star by order of King Carl XVI Gustaf, the King of Sweden.
Madonna's hit "Vogue" paid tribute to her as the first star mentioned on the song's rap section: "Vogue, vogue / Beauty's where you find it / Greta Garbo and Marilyn Monroe". The song was released on March 20, 1990; less than a month before Garbo's death.
In September 2005, the United States Postal Service and Swedish Posten jointly issued two commemorative stamps bearing her likeness.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1920	Mr and Mrs Stockholm Go Shopping	Elder sister	Swedish: Herrskapet Stockholm ute på inköp Garbo's segment is often known as How Not to Dress Source: The 2005 Kino Video The Saga of Gosta Berling DVD
1921	The Gay Cavalier	Maidservant	Uncredited Swedish: En lyckoriddare The film is lost
1921	Our Daily Bread	Companion	Swedish: Konsum Stockholm Promo Source: The 2005 Kino Video The Saga of Gosta Berling DVD
1921	A Scarlet Angel	Extra	Uncredited Swedish: Kärlekens ögon The film is lost
1922	Peter the Tramp	Greta	Swedish: Luffar-Petter Source: The 2005 Kino Video The Saga of Gosta Berling DVD
1924	The Saga of Gosta Berling	Elizabeth Dohna	Swedish: Gösta Berlings saga Directed by Mauritz Stiller
1925	The Joyless Street	Greta Rumfort	German: Die freudlose Gasse
1926	The Torrent	Leonora Moreno aka La Brunna	First American movie
1926	The Temptress	Elena
1926	Flesh and the Devil	Felicitas	Directed by Clarence Brown
1927	Love	Anna Karenina	Directed by Edmund Goulding
1928	The Divine Woman	Marianne	Only a 9 minute reel exists. Source: The Mysterious Lady DVD
1928	The Mysterious Lady	Tania Fedorova
1928	A Woman of Affairs	Diana Merrick Furness
1929	Wild Orchids	Lillie Sterling
1929	The Single Standard	Arden Stuart Hewlett
1929	The Kiss	Irene Guarry
1930	Anna Christie	Anna Christie	Garbo's first talkie Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress
1930	Romance	Madame Rita Cavallini	Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress
1931	Anna Christie	Anna Christie	MGM's German version of Anna Christie, released early 1931
1931	Inspiration	Yvonne Valbret
1931	Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise)	Susan Lenox
1931	Mata Hari	Mata Hari
1932	Grand Hotel	Grusinskaya
1932	As You Desire Me	Zara aka Marie
1933	Queen Christina	Queen Christina
1934	The Painted Veil	Katrin Koerber Fane
1935	Anna Karenina	Anna Karenina	New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress
1936	Camille	Marguerite Gautier	New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress National Board of Review Best Acting Award Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress
1937	Conquest	Countess Marie Walewska
1939	Ninotchka	Nina Ivanovna 'Ninotchka' Yakushova	National Board of Review Best Acting Award Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated—New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress
1941	Two-Faced Woman	Karin Borg Blake	National Board of Review Best Acting Award Nominated—New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress

Romy Schneider

Romy Schneider (23 September 1938 – 29 May 1982) was a German film actress who was born in Austria and also held French citizenship.

Early life

Schneider was born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach in Nazi-era Vienna, six months after the Anschluss, into a family of actors that included her paternal grandmother Rosa Albach-Retty, her Austrian-born German father Wolf Albach-Retty and her German mother Magda Schneider. After her parents' divorce in 1945, Magda took charge of Romy and her brother Wolfi, eventually supervising the young girl's career, often appearing alongside her daughter. Schneider made her film debut in Wenn der weisse Flieder wieder blüht (1953), at the age of 15. Her career was also overseen by her stepfather, Hans Herbert Blatzheim, a noted restaurateur who Schneider indicated had an unhealthy interest in her.

Career

Romy Schneider's first movie was Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht (When the White Lilacs Bloom Again) in 1953, credited as Romy Schneider-Albach. In 1954, Schneider for the first time portrayed a royal, playing a young Queen Victoria in the Austrian film Mädchenjahre einer Königin (known in the U.S. as The Story of Vicky and in Britain as Victoria in Dover). Schneider's breakthrough came with her portrayal of Elisabeth, Empress Consort of Austria, in the romantic biopic Sissi (1955) and its two sequels, Sissi – The Young Empress (1956) and Sissi – Fateful Years of an Empress (1957), all with Karlheinz Böhm, who became a close friend. Less stereotypical films during this busy period include Robinson soll nicht sterben (The Legend of Robinson Crusoe) (1957) putting her among a stellar cast and opposite a young Horst Buchholz, and Monpti (1957), directed by Helmut Käutner and again opposite Buchholz.
Schneider soon starred in Christine (1958), a remake of Max Ophüls's 1933 film Liebelei (itself based upon a play by Arthur Schnitzler and starring her mother Magda Schneider). It was during the filming of Christine that Schneider fell in love with French actor Alain Delon, who co-starred in the movie. She left Germany to join him in Paris and they announced their engagement in 1959.
Schneider decided to live and to work in France, slowly gaining the interest of film directors such as Orson Welles for The Trial (1962), based upon Franz Kafka's The Trial and was introduced by Delon to Luchino Visconti.
Under Visconti's direction, she gave performances in the Théâtre Moderne as Annabella (and Delon as Giovanni) in John Ford's stage play 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1961) and in the film Boccaccio '70 (segment: "The Job"). In 1962 Schneider played Anna in Sacha Pitoëff's production of Chekhov's play The Seagull, also at the Théâtre Moderne. A brief stint in Hollywood included appearances in Good Neighbor Sam, a 1964 comedy with Jack Lemmon, and 1965 What's New Pussycat? co-starring Peter O'Toole, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen who also wrote the screenplay.
Schneider and Delon decided to split up in 1963 although they remained close lifelong friends and continued to work together in such films as La Piscine (The Swimming Pool) (1968) and The Assassination of Trotsky (1972).

German stamp published in 2000

Romy Schneider continued to work in France during the 1970s, appearing in films as Les choses de la vie (1970), Max et les ferrailleurs (1971), César et Rosalie (1972), and Le vieux fusil (1975). The harsh L'important c'est d'aimer (1974) garnered her first César Award (France's equivalent of the Oscar).
On 30 October 1974, Romy Schneider created one of the most memorable moments on German television. She was the second guest on Dietmar Schönherr's talk show Je später der Abend (The later the evening) when she, after a rather terse interview, remarked passionately to the last guest, bank robber and author Burkhard Driest: "Sie gefallen mir. Sie gefallen mir sehr." (I like you. I like you a lot.)
Ludwig, Visconti's 1972 film about the life of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, featured her as a much more complex, mature, even bitter Elisabeth of Austria. "Sissi sticks to me just like oatmeal", Schneider once said.
She also acted in Le Trio infernal (1974) with Michel Piccoli, and in Garde à vue (1981) with Michel Serrault and Lino Ventura. An unpleasant incident occurred during this period with leading German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder who wanted her to play the lead in his 1979 film The Marriage of Maria Braun. Negotiations broke down when he called Schneider a "dumb cow" and Schneider responded by declaring she would never work with such a beast as Fassbinder.
In 1980 she starred in Bertrand Tavernier's Death Watch (La mort en direct), based on David G. Compton's novel, playing a dying woman whose last days are watched on national television via a camera implanted in the brain of a journalist (Harvey Keitel). Her last film was La Passante du Sans-Souci (The Passerby), (1982).

Personal life

In July 1966 Schneider married Harry Meyen (1924–1979), a German director and actor who committed suicide in Hamburg, Germany in 1979. The couple had a son, David Christopher, born on December 3, 1966. David died at the age of 14 on 5 July 1981. He had attempted to climb the spiked fence at his stepfather's parents' home when he punctured his femoral artery.
In 1975, Schneider married Daniel Biasini, her private secretary; they separated in 1981. Their daughter Sarah Biasini (born 21 July 1977) is now an actress.

Death

Grave of Romy Schneider and her son in Boissy-sans-Avoir

Schneider began drinking alcohol in excess after the death of her son David. When she was found dead in her apartment in Paris on 29 May 1982, it was suggested that she had committed suicide by taking a lethal cocktail of alcohol and sleeping pills. After another post-mortem examination was carried out, authorities declared that she had died from cardiac arrest. Her tombstone at Boissy-sans-Avoir in the Canton of Montfort-l'Amaury bears the name Rosemarie Albach. Shortly afterwards, Alain Delon arranged for David to be buried in the same grave.

Enduring popularity

The French journalist Eugène Moineau initiated in 1984 the Prix Romy Schneider; this prize—the most prestigious award for promising actresses in the French film industry—is awarded by a jury each year in Paris in conjunction with the Prix Patrick Dewaere (formerly the Prix Jean Gabin). In 1990, the Austrian newspaper Kurier created the Romy TV Award in honour of Romy Schneider. In 2003, she was voted 78th on the list of the greatest Germans in the German TV programme Unsere Besten (the German version of 100 Greatest Britons)—the second highest ranked actress (Marlene Dietrich was 50th) on that list. Until 2002, the Austrian Federal Railways InterCity service IC 535 from Wien Südbahnhof to Graz was named "Romy Schneider".
A movie about Romy Schneider's life, titled Eine Frau wie Romy/Une femme comme Romy (A Woman Like Romy) was planned by Warner Bros. for 2009; Schneider's role was going to be played by Yvonne Catterfeld. The project was cancelled in July 2009. A musical about Schneider, Romy – Die Welt aus Gold (Romy – The Golden World) was premiered in 2009 at the Theater Heilbronn. In November 2009 the ARD broadcast the feature film Romy with Jessica Schwarz in the title role.

Filmography

Title	Year	Role	Director
Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht	1953	Evchen Förster	Hans Deppe
Mädchenjahre einer Königin	1954	Princess Victoria / Queen Victoria	Ernst Marischka
Feuerwerk	1954	Anna Oberholzer	Paul Burkhard, Erik Charell, and Kurt Hoffmann
Der letzte Mann	1955	Niddy Hoevelmann	Harald Braun
Die Deutschmeister	1955	Stanzi Hübner	Ernst Marischka
Sissi	1955	Sissi	Ernst Marischka
Kitty und die große Welt	1956	Kitty Dupont	Alfred Weidenmann
Sissi – Die junge Kaiserin	1956	Sissi	Ernst Marischka
Sissi – Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin	1957	Sissi	Ernst Marischka
Robinson soll nicht sterben	1957	Maud	Josef von Báky
Monpti	1957	Anne-Claire Jouvain	Helmut Käutner
Eva (Die Halbzarte)	1958	Nicole	Rolf Thiele
Scampolo	1958	Scampolo	Alfred Weidenmann
Mädchen in Uniform	1958	Manuela von Meinhardis	Géza von Radványi
Christine	1958	Christine Weiring	Pierre Gaspard-Huit
Katia	1959	Katia	Robert Siodmak
Die schöne Lügnerin	1959	Fanny Emmetsrieder	Axel von Ambesser
Ein Engel auf Erden	1959	Stewardess/Angel	Géza von Radványi
Purple Noon (Plein soleil)	1960	Freddie's companion (uncredited)	René Clément
Boccaccio '70	1961	Pupe (segment Il lavoro)	Luchino Visconti
Le Combat dans l'île	1962	Anne	Alain Cavalier
The Trial	1962	Leni	Orson Welles
The Victors	1962	Regine	Carl Foreman
The Cardinal	1963	Annemarie von Hartman	Otto Preminger
Good Neighbor Sam	1964	Janet Lagerlof	David Swift
L'Enfer	1964[F 1]	Odette	Henri-Georges Clouzot
L'Amour à la mer	1965	The star	Guy Gilles
Is Paris Burning? (Paris brûle-t-il ?)	1965	scene cut	René Clément
What's New Pussycat?	1965	Carole Werner	Clive Donner
10:30 P.M. Summer	1965	Claire	Jules Dassin
La Voleuse	1965	Julia Kreuz	Jean Chapot
Triple Cross	1966	Countess	Terence Young
Otley	1968	Imogen	Dick Clement
The Swimming Pool	1969	Marianne	Jacques Deray
La califfa	1970	Irene Corsini	Alberto Bevilacqua
Les choses de la vie	1970	Hélène	Claude Sautet
My Lover My Son	1970	Francesca Anderson	John Newland
Qui ?	1970	Marina	Léonard Keigel
Bloomfield	1971	Nira	Richard Harris
The Assassination of Trotsky	1971	Gita Samuels	Joseph Losey
Max et les Ferrailleurs	1971	Lily	Claude Sautet
César et Rosalie	1972	Rosalie	Claude Sautet
Ludwig	1972	Elisabeth of Austria	Luchino Visconti
Le Train	1973	Anna Kupfer	Pierre Granier-Deferre
Un amour de pluie	1974	Elizabeth	Jean-Claude Brialy
Le Trio infernal	1974	Philomena Schmidt	Francis Girod
L'important c'est d'aimer	1974	Nadine Chevalier	Andrzej Żuławski
Le Mouton enragé	1974	Roberte Groult	Michel Deville
Le Vieux Fusil	1975	Clara Dandieu	Robert Enrico
Les innocents aux mains sales	1975	Julie Wormser	Claude Chabrol
Mado	1976	Hélène	Claude Sautet
Une femme à sa fenêtre	1976	Margot Santorini	Pierre Granier-Deferre
Gruppenbild mit Dame	1977	Leni Gruyten	Aleksandar Petrović
A Simple Story	1978	Marie	Claude Sautet
Bloodline	1979	Hélène Martin	Terence Young
Clair de femme	1979	Lydia	Costa-Gavras
Death Watch	1979	Katherine Mortenhoe	Bertrand Tavernier
La Banquière	1980	Emma Eckhert	Francis Girod
Fantasma d'amore	1981	Anna Brigatti Zighi	Dino Risi
Garde à vue	1981	Chantal Martinaud	Claude Miller
La Passante du Sans-Souci	1982	Elsa Wiener/Lina Baumstein	Jacques Rouffio