By Bonnie J. Gordon 1 hour, 32 minutes ago
MUNICH (Hollywood Reporter) -
America has Marilyn Monroe;
Europe has Romy Schneider. Although the German-Austrian actress
with French citizenship had her international breakthrough soon
after the death of the U.S. screen icon, the same sultry
potpourri of beauty, talent, vulnerability, fame and tragedy
swirls around both.
Schneider, who died in 1982 in Paris at 43, is now the
subject of two biopics set for release next year. A TV movie
with the working title "Romy" will star Jessica Schwarz
("Perfume: The Story of a Murderer"), and a French-German
co-production from Warner Bros. called "A Woman Like Romy" has
cast German singer-actress Yvonne Catterfeld.
"She played vulnerable figures, but women who had something
to say to the world," Schneider biographer Renate Seydel says.
"She chose those roles very deliberately."
Born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach-Retty into a family of
Viennese actors including German mother Magda Schneider, Romy
made her film debut at 15.
A few years later she captivated the continent with her
portrayal of teenaged Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the
"Sissi" trilogy, with her mother in a supporting role.
Almost two decades later she would star in Luchino
Visconti's "Ludwig: The Mad King of Bavaria" as a more mature,
embittered Elisabeth, transforming her younger take on the role
that she once famously said stuck to her "like oatmeal."
Meanwhile, her drawn-out engagement to Alain Delon, her
disdain for Hollywood and her work with such directors as
Visconti, Otto Preminger and Orson Welles forged a powerful
bond with the French filmgoing public. Eventually she did star
in a few U.S. movies, most famous among them being Clive
Donner's "What's New Pussycat?"
But it was her prodigious work in European film that
cemented her place in history. In 1999, she was voted the
"greatest actress of all time" by readers of a French
newspaper, and in 2006, she was the top-ranking female in a
survey of Germany's all-time favorite actors.
Two divorces, the suicide of her first ex-husband, two
children and the continuing onscreen relationship with Delon
later, "it was her personal destiny that was most important in
creating her myth," Seydel says.
After the accidental death of her 14-year-old son,
Schneider began drinking heavily and died less than a year
later. Officially, the cause was cardiac arrest. But rumors
have persisted for more than 25 years that Schneider committed
suicide by combining sleeping pills with alcohol.
Next year's biopics are likely to fan the fires of the Romy
myth.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
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