Romy Schneider

Biography

Romy Schneider (Vienna, 1938 – Paris, 1982) was an Austrian-born actress who became a star in Germany and, above all, in France, where most of her celebrated work was done. Born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach into a family of performers, she grew up around the theatre and cinema: her mother, Magda Schneider, and her father, Wolf Albach-Retty, were both working actors. She adopted her mother's surname as her stage name, and her career belongs to the generation of European performers who rebuilt their film industries after the war.

She made her screen debut at fifteen in When the White Lilacs Bloom Again (1953), where she even sang. Her name reached audiences across Europe with the Sissi trilogy, made between 1955 and 1957 with Karlheinz Böhm, in which she played Empress Elisabeth of Austria with a naturalness that audiences responded to. That image of the romantic princess stuck with her for years, and from the early 1960s she sought more adult roles. She worked with Orson Welles on The Trial (1962) and with Luchino Visconti, and became one of the favourite actresses of Claude Sautet, with whom she made several films. The Things of Life (1970) made her an icon of French cinema, and Visconti's Ludwig (1973) let her return to Elisabeth from a more mature perspective. Two César Awards for best actress, for That Most Important Thing: Love and A Simple Story, confirmed her standing in France.

Her personal life was turbulent. After her relationship with Alain Delon she married the director and actor Harry Meyen, with whom she had a son, David, and from whom she separated in 1975. In 1981 David died after an accident at home, a blow from which, according to those close to her, she never recovered. She died in Paris in 1982, aged 43. No autopsy was carried out, so it was never established whether she died of a stress-related heart condition or by suicide. Her legacy endures in tributes such as the Romy awards, created by the Austrian newspaper Kurier in 1990, and in her continuing place among the great screen actresses of European cinema.

Key films

• Sissi (1955)
• The Things of Life (1970), by Claude Sautet, the role that made her an icon of French cinema
• Max and the Junkmen (1971), another Sautet collaboration, a dark thriller
• The Assassination of Trotsky (1972), by Joseph Losey, alongside her lifelong friendship with Alain Delon
• Ludwig (1973), by Luchino Visconti, revisiting Elisabeth of Austria from a more mature angle
• A Simple Story (1978), by Claude Sautet, which earned one of her two César Awards