Romy Schneider from 0 to 43 years old

Rosemarie Magdalena Albach (September 23, 1938 - May 29, 1982) was a German-French actress. She began her career in the German Heimatfilm genre in the early 1950s when she was 15. From 1955 to 1957, she played the central character of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the Austrian Sissi trilogy, and later reprised the role in a more mature version in Luchino Visconti’s Ludwig (1973). Schneider moved to France, where she made successful and critically acclaimed films with some of the most notable film directors of that era. During the filming of the movie ’Christine’, she fell in love with French actor Alain Delon who co-starred in the movie, and they announced their engagement in 1959. She decided to live and to work in France, slowly gaining the interest of film directors such as Orson Welles for The Trial (1962), based on Franz Kafka’s The Trial. She was also introduced to Luchino Visconti. Schneider and Delon decided to separate in December 1963, although they remained close life-long friends. They continued to work together in such films as La Piscine (The Swimming Pool, 1968) and The Assassination of Trotsky (1972). Following the end of her relationship with Delon, Schneider married German director and actor Harry Meyen in July 1966; they later divorced. The couple had a son, David Christopher. In 1975, she married Daniel Biasini, her private secretary. They had a daughter, Sarah Magdalena, who is also an actress. In July 1981, her son David died at the age of 14 after attempting to climb the spiked fence at his stepfather’s parents’ home and puncturing his femoral artery in the process. She never managed to recover from this loss and began drinking alcohol excessively. Schneider was found dead in her Paris apartment on 29 May 1982 at the age of 43. Although it was suggested she committed suicide caused by an overdose of sleeping pills, she was declared to have died from cardiac arrest.