Celebrity Biographies
Mary Merchant
María Mercader participated in more than forty films. She was the second wife of Vittorio de Sica, with whom she had two children. The Spanish actress she passed away on Wednesday, January 26, 2011, in Rome, at the age of 94.
Born in Barcelona on March 6, 1918, María de la Asunción Mercader Fordada belonged to a family of the Catalan high bourgeoisie. At the age of five, she and she appeared briefly in the silent film La bruja , an adaptation of a zarzuela. At 21, she seriously began her professional career, just at the end of the Civil War, as the protagonist of Windmills , by Rosario Pi.
After several films, he ended up working much more outside of Spain, in films such as the Italian Recuerdo de amor , during which he fell in love with another of the actors, Vittorio De Sica , and became his lover, until he divorced Giuditta Rissone . , his wife. They appeared together on screen again in Recuerdo de amor , Nessuno torna indietro and La puerta del cielo .
She was by Vittorio De Sica’s side until his death on November 13, 1974. With him she had two children, the composer Manuel De Sica , and the actor Christian De Sica . When she gave birth, she decided to leave the cinema and theater to dedicate herself to the family, according to her comment, because De Sica asked her to. “He was a gentleman, a good man and someone who was very easy for me to work with,” the actress commented.
After De Sica’s death, María Mercader occasionally returned to the screen, in titles such as La casa del sorriso , by Marco Ferreri , and Luces y sombras , by Jaime Camino . Under the orders of her son Christian, she took part in the film Il Conte Max .