Actresses vie to play fallen Austrian screen icon
Actresses vie to play fallen Austrian screen icon
Posted by
Petes1234567
568 days 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.
The actresses will have their hands full portraying Schneider -- a woman whose roles, loves and outspoken opinions embodied liberated European womanhood in the '70s.
"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?"
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.
The actresses will have their hands full portraying Schneider -- a woman whose roles, loves and outspoken opinions embodied liberated European womanhood in the '70s.
"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?"
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