Marina Vlady

Biography

She had the makings of a blonde bombshell and could have ended up in film history annals as merely a second-rate Brigitte Bardot, but sex symbol Marina Vlady proved she was capable of much more. In her prime she was nominated for a Golden Globe and won a "Best Actress" award at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival for her stunning performance in The Conjugal Bed (1963) [The Conjugal Bed] with Italy's Ugo Tognazzi. This provocative sex-kitten was born Marina De Poliakoff-Baïdaroff,in Clichy, France on May 10, 1938, the youngest of four acting sisters. Her Russian-born father was a well-established painter in France. While young Marina trained in dance and initially seemed to entertain thoughts of becoming a prima ballerina. But, like her sisters, she discovered a closer kinship to acting. The most outgoing of her siblings, Monica caught the eye of talent agents via more uninhibited roles. Older sister Odile Versois, who possessed a similar feline beauty, was the first of her family to enter pictures. Marina (playing a youthful roller-skater) and another sister Olga made their minor film debuts in Summer Storm (1949) [Summer Storm], which featured Odile. In 1955, at the ripe young age of 17, Marina met and married director/writer/actor Robert Hossein, who featured her prominently and seductively in a number of his films including The Wicked Go to Hell (1955) [The Wicked Go to Hell], as a femme fatale bent on revenge, Pardonnez nos offenses (1956), Double Agents (1959) [Double Agents] and, notably, Night Is Not for Sleep (1958) [Nude in a White Car], which co-starred sister Odile. She had two sons by Hossein but the marriage lasted only a few years. Gracing both French and Italian productions throughout most of her career, Marina was not shy at playing unsympathetic, even…