ROMY SCHNEIDER

Romy Schneider was born Rosemarie Magdelena Albach-Retty in 1938 in Vienna, Austria, to two very successful actors, Wolf Albach-Retty and Magda Schneider. Her parents divorced when she was 7, and when she was 15 she made her debut in movies, using her mother's maiden name.Two years later she became very popular in a trilogy of movies called Sissi, about the early life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. In 1958, she appeared in a movie opposite French actor Alain Delon. They became engaged and she moved to France with him, marrying him when she was just 20. Over the next few years she worked with some of the greatest directors including Luchino Visconti in Boccacio (1961), Orson Welles in The Trial (1962), and Otto Preminger in The Cardinal (1963).

She divorced Delon in 1964, and she went to Germany where she married stage director Harry Meyen and they had a son. They divorced in 1975, and she married again. Her once-charmed life became filled with tragedy. She had a stillborn child in 1976 by her third husband, and her second husband committed suicide in 1979. In 1981, her son from her first marriage died when he was impaled trying to climb a fence, and he was just 14. That same year she had serious health issues and needed a kidney operation. Not surprisingly after this series of tragic events, she turned to alcohol and pills. In May 1982 she had a heart attack (or possibly she committed suicide). She was just 43 years old.