Romy Schneider

However, no post-mortem was carried out and she was officially declared as having died of cardiac arrest. Biberman died in 1971, and Sondergaard made a few more film and television appearances, before dying from cerebral vascular thrombosis at Woodland Hills, California. 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. Highly controversial when it was made, and not a commercial success, its artistic and cultural merit was recognised in 1992 when the National Film Preservation Board selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. 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. With her career stalled, she supported her husband during the production of Salt of the Earth (1954). Her last film was La Passante du Sans-Souci (The Passerby, 1982). Biberman from 1930, her career suffered irreparable damage during the Red Scare of the early 1950s, when her husband was accused of being a communist and named as one of the Hollywood Ten.

Of her other films, the macabre Le trio infernal (1974) with Michel Piccoli is worth mentioning. Married to the film director Herbert J. Even after the breakup of their relationship, Schneider continued starring in films with Alain Delon (La Piscine -- The Swimming Pool -- of 1969). She received a second Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role in Anna and the King of Siam in 1946. July 14, 1977), an actress, startlingly resembles her mother and has been a target of German tabloids for quite some time. In 1940 she played a role which would become one of her most identifiable, as the exotic and sinister wife in The Letter. Her daughter by her second marriage, Sarah Magdalena Biasini (b. Originally cast as the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz (1939), she was replaced by Margaret Hamilton when MGM decided to change the Wicked Witch from a glamorous character to an ugly one.

In 1975 she married Daniel Biasini, her private secretary; they separated in 1981. Walt Disney Studios used her as the main inspiration for the Wicked Queen in the animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). They had a son, David-Christopher (1966 - 1981). Her career as a supporting actress flourished during the 1930s. Dumped by Delon in 1963, she married (1966) and divorced (1975) Harry Meyen (1924 - 1979), a German actor who committed suicide. She made her first film appearance in Anthony Adverse (1936) and became the first recipient of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for this performance. Schneider's private life was rather quite turbulent. Born Edith Holm Sondergaard in Litchfield, Minnesota to Danish parents, Sondergaard began her acting career in the theater.

"Sissi sticks to me just like oatmeal," she once said. Gale Sondergaard (February 15, 1899 - August 13, 1985) was a US film actress. 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). 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. 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).

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). Interestingly, this Austrian movie is about the early years of Queen Victoria, in particular her first encounter with Prince Albert. In the film Mädchenjahre einer Königin (Ernst Marischka, 1954) Romy Schneider for the first time portrayed a royal. 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.