Today famous actress Romy Schneider would have become 76 Romy Schneider was born on 23 September 1938 in Vienna, Austria into a family of actors. Making her film debut at the age of 15, her breakthrough came two years later in the very popular trilogy Sissi (1955). Her ambition was to become a painter, a career idea she jettisoned after her film career was suddenly launched at the age of 15. A director of one of her mothers films offered a part playing the on-screen daughter, and Wenn der weisse Flieder wieder blüht (When the White Lilacs Bloom Again) was a box-office success in 1953. Schneider was offered more parts, including a light biopic about the adolescence of Queen Victoria, Mädchenjahre einer Königen (Girlhood of a Queen). Beloved Sissi Mädchenjahre einer Königen was written and directed by veteran Austrian filmmaker Ernst Marischka, and its success led to Schneider being cast in 1955s Sissi, the first in a trilogy of films about Elisabeth, the wife of Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef. The film was a huge success in West Germany and Austria at the time and was quickly followed by two sequels that chronicled the beloved princesss 1854 wedding. She was cast in a 1958 movie Christine, about romantic intrigues at the 1906 Viennese court, which co-starred her with Alain Delon, one of Frances top leading men at the time. The pair fell in love, and upon their engagement Schneider left Germany and settled in Paris with him. Taking a break from film for a time, Schneider made an uncredited cameo appearance in Plein Soleil (Purple Noon), the first-ever film adaptation of Patricia Highsmiths The Talented Mr. Ripley novels, but turned down other parts. She was even offered $200,000 for a fourth Sissi, but Schneider was determined to transform herself into a serious film actress, despite the sniping back home that she had given up her career for love. I sometimes think I am too true, too honest, too direct, she told a writer for Look in 1962. Multilingual Star Schneiders return to the screen began with her debut on the Paris stage with Delon in Tis Pity Shes a Whore, an Elizabethan drama in translation that required Schneider to play her part in French, which was still unfamiliar to her. The production, in the hands of a famously formidable Italian stage and screen director Luchino Visconti, was a hit with critics and theater-goers, and led Visconti to cast her in Boccaccio 70. This was a trilogy of stories involving some salacious romantic intrigues, with Anita Ekberg and Sophia Loren playing the two other roles in segments directed by renowned Italian filmmakers Federico Fellini and Vittorio de Sica. Schneider made a few films in English, including Orson Welless lauded adaptation of the Franz Kafka novel The Trial. The 1962 version starred Anthony Perkins as a man who is put on trial for unknown crimes; in an effort to clear his name, he visits the palatial home of the mysterious Advocate, played by Welles. Schneider was cast as the seductive maid there, Leni. Next, Schneider appeared in The Victors, a 1963 Columbia Studios project set during World War II. In May 1982, aged 43, Schneider was found dead in her Paris apartment.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 13:47:22 +0000
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