Romy Schneider

However, no post-mortem was carried out and she was officially declared as having died of cardiac arrest. After a long bout with diabetes, a broken hip, and a number of strokes, Jan Sterling died on March 26, 2004, in Los Angeles, California, a few days before her 84th birthday. When she was found dead in her apartment in Paris, France in 1982, aged only 43, rumour had it that she had committed suicide by taking a lethal cocktail of alcohol and sleeping pills. Inactive for nearly two decades, she made an appearance at the Cinecon Film Festival in Los Angeles in the fall of 2001. A heavy smoker all her life, Schneider also took to drinking in her later years, especially after the sudden death, on July 5, 1981, of her son, who was found impaled on a fence at his stepfather's parents' house, which he was apparently attempting to climb. They never married but stayed together until his death in 1993. Her last film was La Passante du Sans-Souci (The Passerby, 1982). In the 70s she entered into a strong personal relationship with actor Sam Wanamaker.

Of her other films, the macabre Le trio infernal (1974) with Michel Piccoli is worth mentioning. Herbert Hoover in the TV miniseries Backstairs at the White House. Even after the breakup of their relationship, Schneider continued starring in films with Alain Delon (La Piscine -- The Swimming Pool -- of 1969). She retired from films in favor of the stage in 1969 and returned before the cameras in 1976 to portray Mrs. July 14, 1977), an actress, startlingly resembles her mother and has been a target of German tabloids for quite some time. Married and divorced to actor John Merivale (http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0580881/) in the 40s, Sterling's career slipped down after the death of her second husband, actor Paul Douglas, in 1959. Her daughter by her second marriage, Sarah Magdalena Biasini (b. During the following years, she appears regularly in movies like Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, Kathy O, and The Female Animal.

In 1975 she married Daniel Biasini, her private secretary; they separated in 1981. Also the same year, she travelled to England to play the role of Julia in the first film version of George Orwell's 1984, despite being several months pregnant at the time. They had a son, David-Christopher (1966 - 1981). In 1954 Sterling was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe for her great performance in The High and the Mighty. Dumped by Delon in 1963, she married (1966) and divorced (1975) Harry Meyen (1924 - 1979), a German actor who committed suicide. Shuttling between films and television, she showed up in nearly all the major live anthologies of the 1950s, stood out in such 'bad girl' film roles in Caged (1950), The Big Carnival [aka 'Ace in the Hole'] (1951), Flesh and Fury (1952), The Human Jungle (1954), and Female on the Beach (1955), while making a more sympathetic impression in Sky Full of Moon (1952). Schneider's private life was rather quite turbulent. In 1948 she broke into films supporting the Academy Award winner Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda, in a key, emotional role.

"Sissi sticks to me just like oatmeal," she once said. Then, the actrees Ruth Gordon insisted she change her stage name and the two hit upon 'Jan Sterling'. This meant the beginning of her international film career, which also brought her to Hollywood (Good Neighbor Sam, a 1964 comedy with Jack Lemmon, and the 1965 movie What's New, Pussycat with Woody Allen). Mainly, however, she stayed in France, working with film directors such as Orson Welles (Le Procès of 1963, based upon Franz Kafka's The Trial) and Luchino Visconti (Ludwig, a 1972 film about the life of King Ludwig II of Bavaria in which she played a much maturer Elisabeth of Austria again). Seldom cast in passive roles, Sterling was at her best in parts calling for hard-bitten, sometimes hard-boiled determination. It was during the filming of Christine that she fell in love with French actor Alain Delon, who co-starred in the movie. Schneider became engaged to him in 1959, and the couple moved to Paris. As a teenager she returned to Manhattan, and billed as Jane Sterling, made her first Broadway appearance in Bachelor Born and went on to appear in such major stage offerings as Panama Hattie, Over 21 and Present Laughter. In 1947, she made her movies debut in Tycoon, now billed as Jane Darian. Fed up with the saccharine image these movies had bestowed upon her, Schneider leapt at the chance of starring in the much more sombre Christine (1958), a remake of Max Ophüls's 1933 film Liebelei (which itself is based upon a play by Arthur Schnitzler). She was schooled by private tutors in London and Paris, and was enrolled in Fay Compton's dramatic school in London.

Her breakthrough, however, came with her portrayal of Princess Elisabeth of Bavaria -- then to become Empress Elisabeth of Austria -- in the romantic biopic Sissi (1955) and its two sequels (1956 and 1957). Sterling was educated in private schools before heading to Europe with her family. Interestingly, this Austrian movie is about the early years of Queen Victoria, in particular her first encounter with Prince Albert. Jan Sterling was born Jane Sterling Adriance on April 3, 1921, in New York City, NY, into a prosperous family. In the film Mädchenjahre einer Königin (Ernst Marischka, 1954) Romy Schneider for the first time portrayed a royal. One of Hollywood's most talented and versatile stars, often cool and stunning blonde in Hollywood film noir movies of the 1940s and '50s, the actrees Jan Sterling ensured audiences of a real good time with her sexy roles in soaps, crime action and comedies. Young Romy's career was also overseen by her stepfather, Hans-Herbert Blatzheim, a noted restaurateur, who Schneider indicated had an unhealthy interest in her.

After her divorce in 1945, Magda Schneider took care of Romy and eventually also supervised her career, often appearing alongside her daughter, who had made her film debut already in 1953, aged 15. She was born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach-Retty in Vienna into a family of actors consisting of her paternal grandmother Rosa Albach-Retty, her father Wolf Albach-Retty, and her mother Magda Schneider. Romy Schneider-Albach (September 23, 1938 - May 29, 1982) was an Austrian actress. Romy Schneider a.k.a.