Romy Schneider would have been 85 years old on September 23, 2023. A look back at the contradictory life of a great film icon.
Acting icon Romy Schneider would have turned 85 on September 23, 2023. Her short but remarkable life was marked by contradictions, glamor and an everything-changing stroke of fate. She achieved fame as “Sissi” when she was a teenager – she tried to emancipate herself from the role throughout her life. In France, the “cute Viennese girl” finally became a fascinating “femme fatale”.
Nevertheless, to this day it is primarily Ernst Marischka’s (1893-1963) “Sissi” trilogy, in which she embodies Empress Elisabeth (1937-1898), that has anchored Romy Schneider deeply in people’s minds. “Sissi” (1955), “Sissi – The Young Empress” (1956) and “Sissi – Fateful Years of an Empress” (1957) have become cult films.
What would Romy Schneider do today if she were still alive? Would she be a grande dame of French cinema, would she have long since withdrawn from the public eye or would she make irrelevant TV films? One can only speculate about that. Because Romy Schneider has been dead for more than 40 years.
But from the beginning…
Romy Schneider was born on September 23, 1938 as Rosemarie Magdalena Albach-Retty in Vienna. Her parents were the Augsburg actress Magda Schneider (1909-1996) and the Austrian actor Wolf Albach-Retty (1906-1967). Her younger brother Wolf-Dieter Albach-Retty was born in 1940. Her parents’ marriage lasted from 1937 to 1945 – between the two’s separation and divorce, little Romy had just started school.
Romy Schneider, who is only 1.61 meters tall and petite, knew early on that she wanted to follow in her parents’ footsteps. She wrote in her diary on June 10, 1952: “If it were up to me, I would become an actress immediately.” Just a year later, she appeared in front of the camera for the first time alongside her mother Magda Schneider for the local film “When the White Lilac Blooms Again”. From then on she used the artist name Romy Schneider.
The young artist celebrated her early career highlight just a short time later with the aforementioned success of the “Sissi” films. Here too, Magda and Romy, who was only 16 when filming began, were seen as mother and daughter.
The new life in Paris
The young actress refused to make a fourth “Sissi” film. Instead, as a 20-year-old, she moved to Paris in the fall of 1958 with the then unknown French actor Alain Delon, 87. The two met while filming “Christine” (1958). They got engaged in the spring of 1959, but never married.
Instead, a painful separation followed in 1963. Romy Schneider, who was filming in Hollywood at the time, learned from the press that Alain Delon, who was now a global star, had another woman. When Schneider returned to Paris, he had long since moved out of their shared home – and was soon married.
Romy Schneider also tied the knot. In 1965 she met the Hamburg director and actor Harry Meyen (1924-1979). The two became a couple, moved to Berlin and married in July 1966. At the end of the year their son David Christopher Meyen (1966-1981) was born.
In the 1970s, Romy Schneider filmed mostly in France and managed to establish herself there as a character actress. Schneider and Meyen separated in 1973 and divorced in 1975. At that time, Schneider was already in a relationship with her French private secretary Daniel Biasini, 74. The two married at the end of 1975. In the summer of 1977, their daughter Sarah Magdalena Biasini, 46, now also an actress, was born. Schneider and Biasini divorced in May 1981.
A stroke of fate changes everything
In July 1981, Romy Schneider’s then 14-year-old son David had a fatal accident while climbing over a fence with metal spikes in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, northwest of Paris. The big stroke of fate of her life.
Despite the loss, Schneider appeared shortly afterwards in October 1981 for the filming of the film “The Stroller of Sans-Souci”. The actress did not live to see the German theatrical release of her last film. On the morning of May 29, 1982, her partner at the time, film producer Laurent Ptin, 72, found her slumped lifelessly at her desk. The official cause of death: heart failure. What really led to her death at the age of just 43 will probably forever remain a mystery.
Schneider was buried in the Boissy-sans-Avoir cemetery. Alain Delon organized the funeral and ensured that Schneider’s son was reburied in his mother’s grave. Schneider’s daughter Sarah Biasini was just four years old at the time of her mother’s death – she has hardly any memories. In her author debut “The Beauty of Heaven” (2021), the now 46-year-old admits: “Whenever I think of her, it’s painful. It reminds me of the emptiness in me because she’s no longer there.”
