Romy Schneider

Her role as Empress Sissi made her an international star. The delicate perfection of her face and her figure, the blue candor of her gaze and the grace of her youthful manners captivated the most refined public of the late 1950s. She was the celluloid reincarnation of the mythical Empress, the archetype of an ideal time forever lost in memory, a happy, prosperous and brimming with romanticism years. Since then she has always been a favorite of the public.

Born in Vienna (Austria) on September 23, 1938, Rosemarie Magdelena Albach-Retty came from a family of artists, as her father was the theater actor Wolff Albach-Retty, son of Rosa Retty, nicknamed the “Sara Bernhard Austrian”. Romy’s mother, Magda Schneider , was also an actress and became famous for her role as Christine in the excellent film Love Affairs by Max Ophüls . The marriage had another son, Wolf, but after a short time they ended up separating. Romy, she spent part of her childhood in a boarding school for nuns, where she developed a love for theater and cinema; and her favorite actor was Orson Welles. When she returned home her mother had remarried, and she then wanted to study at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1938, her mother began shooting the film White Lilas , and the director offered Romy a small role to play her daughter. It was the actress’s debut, at just 15 years old, and she did really well. So much so that she began to be offered roles in movies, which her mother chose meticulously, and so two years later she was offered the role of Empress Elizabeth of Austria in Sissi . Her painstaking work and the attractiveness of the young woman made an extraordinary tandem and the film was a total bombshell. A few months later, the same director, Ernst Marischka , filmed with her Sissi Empress (1955) andThe destiny of Sissi (1956), but after the years he would still repeat the character in up to two other films: Forever My Love (1962) and, ten years later, Ludwig (Luis II of Bavaria) , directed by Luchino Visconti . It is understood that with these five films, the character of Elizabeth of Austria has become so linked to the beautiful Viennese actress.

At the age of twenty, Romy Schneider met Alain Delon on the set of Christine (1958) , a remake of Amoríos , her mother’s most famous film. Both fell in love and lived a relationship in Paris. Later, after some shootings, such as those of Boccaccio 70 or Le combat dans l’île , Romy received a letter from her beloved Orson Welles asking her to work with him. Romy thus saw a dream come true since she was a child and she quickly went to the United States to film The Trial . She would also film in the United States that same year and the following year The Victors and Lend me to your husband , the latter with Jack Lemmon. Although surely the best role of hers in Hollywood was that of the unforgettable Annemarie from The Cardinal , directed by her countryman De Ella Otto Preminger . The actress received a Golden Globe nomination for the role. She Back in France she was put under the orders of Clive Donner in the comedy What’s up, Pussycat? (1965), with a screenplay by Woody Allen . Four years later, she coincided again on the screen with whoever she was her lover, Alain Delon, in the successful The Swimming Pool , by Jacques Deray . Three years earlier, the actress had married businessman Harry Meyern, with whom she had her son David.

Subsequently, he made wonderful films with the director Claude Sautet and the actor Michel Piccoli . In 1970 , Las cosas de la vida and in 1971 , Max and the junk dealers , a great show of film noir. And the following year he met Delon again in The Assassination of Trotsky , by the controversial Joseph Losey . During the 1970s, he generally made quality films, albeit with sometimes insane and disturbing themes. These are examples of those years: Ella, yo y… el otro (1972), Mado (1976), Una vida de mujer (1978), all three with Sautet. In 1975 he filmed The Important is to Love (1975) andInnocents with Dirty Hands (1975), and furthermore she divorced Meyern and remarried screenwriter Daniel Biasini , although the marriage did not last either. Four years after her, her ex-husband Harry Meyern hanged himself, which was a very hard blow for Romy, who then began to drink and have serious problems with insomnia, together with continuous depression.

However, the tragedy had only just begun. After shooting Fantasma de amor (1981), with Marcello Mastroianni , Romy underwent emergency kidney surgery, due to an incipient cancer process. And then shortly after her misfortune struck brutally again: her 14-year-old son David dies after spending the whole night skewered on the gate of her house. Terrible. The actress locked herself in a hotel and did not go out at all. Alain Delon visited her often but without much success… On the morning of May 29, 1982, the actress was found dead (presumably of a heart attack) sitting at the desk in her room. Her heart, only 43 years old, could not take so much pain.