"I am nothing in in life, but everything on the screen," admitted Austrian film actress Romy Schneider in a moment of heartbreaking candor. Never a marquee player in Hollywood (she is possibly best known in the states for her roles in What's New, Pussycat, Otto Preminger's The Cardinal, the 1964 Jack Lemmon vehicle Good Neighbor Sam, and her turn in Orson Welles' production of The Trial), she was huge in Europe. She began her career playing royalty in German language films, and garnered her greatest fame and adulation playing Princess Elisabeth of Bavaria in the "Sissi-films", a series of three films made in the late '50s, a storybook history of the romance of young 'Sissi' and the dashing Emperor Franz Josef of Austria. With this stardom also came the freedom to try more challenging projects, such as working with Luchino Visconti on film with Boccaccio '70 and also on the Parisian stage, where she receives some critical kudos. Her work with Visconti will also allow her to reprise her "Sissi" role in Ludwig. Romy Schneider becomes a much in demand actress. In 1971, Paris Match emblazons this headline: "Forty years after Greta and Marlene, fifteen years after Marilyn, the cinema discovers a new star."
But this success belied a deep personal dissatisfaction and profound sadness. After a series of failed marriages and relationships, compounded with the accidental death of her son in 1981, Schneider reached this horrible conclusion: "It seems to be impossible for me to live with myself - let alone for anyone else." Also this: "Sissi ? I?ve not been Sissi for a long time now ? I am an unhappy 42-year-old woman and my name is Romy Schneider." She smoked three packs of Marlboros a day, drank heavily, and popped barbituates and stimulants. In May of 1982 she died in her Paris apartment at the age of 43, officially due to "natural causes".
There are plenty of interweb shrines celebrating this enigmatic and beautiful actress. The best is Das Romy Schneider Archiv (in German), which collects a ton of images, including portraits, posters, and an excellent collection of German magazine covers. Plus, an assortment of wallpapers for your desktop.
There's also the Romy Schneider Bilderseite, which has a lot of images not found on the Archiv, including a gallery of cardboard picture discs and 45rpm picture sleeves (like most stars of the time, Romy tried her hand as a pop songstress). Also this series of screenshots from The Trial, especially those of a young Romy babying a prone Welles. You go, Orson!
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