Romy Schneider (23 September 1938 – 29 May 1982) was a film actress who achieved success in Germany and France. She started 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 Sissi trilogy. In 1958 she met Alain Delon and they became engaged; Schneider moved to France where she made successful and critically acclaimed films with some of the most notable film directors of that era. Her engagement to Delon ended in 1963 and Schneider subsequently married twice. The son from her first marriage died in an accident in 1981 when he was 14. In May 1982, aged 43, Schneider was found dead in her Paris apartment.Schneider was born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach in Nazi-era Vienna, six months after the Anschluss, into a family of actors that included her paternal grandmother Rosa Albach-Retty, her Austrian father Wolf Albach-Retty and her German mother Magda Schneider. After her parents' divorce in 1945, Magda took charge of Romy and her brother Wolfi, eventually supervising the young girl's career, often appearing alongside her daughter. Her career was also overseen by her stepfather, Hans Herbert Blatzheim, a noted restaurateur who Schneider indicated had an unhealthy interest in her.
In July 1966, following the end of her relationship with Delon, Schneider married German director and actor Harry Meyen (1924–1979). The couple had a son, David Christopher (3 December 1966 – 5 July 1981). but the couple later divorced. Meyen committed suicide in Hamburg, Germany in 1979. In 1975, Schneider married Daniel Biasini, her private secretary; they separated in 1981. Their daughter Sarah Magdalena (born 21 July 1977) is now an actress.David, her son, died at the age of 14 after attempting to climb the spiked fence at his stepfather's parents' home, but punctured his femoral artery in the process. Schneider began drinking alcohol excessively after the death of David. When she was found dead in her apartment in Paris on 29 May 1982, it was suggested that she had committed suicide by taking a lethal cocktail of alcohol and sleeping pills. After another post-mortem examination was carried out, authorities declared that she had died from cardiac arrest. Her tombstone at Boissy-sans-Avoir in the Canton of Montfort-l'Amaury bears the name Rosemarie Albach. Shortly afterwards, Alain Delon arranged for David to be buried in the same grave.The French journalist Eugène Moineau initiated in 1984 the Prix Romy Schneider; this prize—the most prestigious award for promising actresses in the French film industry—is awarded by a jury each year in Paris in conjunction with the Prix Patrick Dewaere (formerly the Prix Jean Gabin). In 1990, the Austrian newspaper Kurier created the Romy TV Award in honour of Schneider. In 2003, she was voted 78th on the list of the greatest Germans in the German TV programme Unsere Besten (the German version of 100 Greatest Britons)—the second highest ranked actress (Marlene Dietrich was 50th) on that list. Until 2002, the Austrian Federal Railways InterCity service IC 535 from Wien Südbahnhof to Graz was named "Romy Schneider".A movie about Schneider's life, titled Eine Frau wie Romy/Une femme comme Romy (A Woman Like Romy) was planned by Warner Bros. for 2009; Schneider's role was going to be played by Yvonne Catterfeld. The project was cancelled in July 2009.A musical about Schneider, Romy – Die Welt aus Gold (Romy – The Golden World) was premiered in 2009 at the Theater Heilbronn.In November 2009 the ARD broadcast the feature film Romy with Jessica Schwarz in the title role.
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