French actress Marina Vladi (real name Marina Catherine de Polyakof-Baidarof) passed away at the age of 88. AFP reported this on Thursday, September 24.
Her children reported the death of Marina Vladi
The 88-year-old artist died on September 24 at her home in Paris. According to Vladi’s children, who told reporters about her death, she “left, surrounded by her loved ones and her animals.”
The cause of the actress's death has not yet been announced. Vladi left behind three sons: Igor Hossein and Pierre Hossein, who both became successful artists in French cinema, and Vladimir Brouillet, who is involved in photography and diving. The eldest of Marina’s children, Vladi Igor, was seriously injured in 1996 after being hit by a car, and has still not fully recovered from this incident.
Marina Vladi was the daughter of emigrants from Russia
Vladi was born on May 10, 1938 in the French city of Clichy. Her parents were white emigrants who left Russia after the 1917 revolution. The family of the future actress was creative: her father sang in the opera, and her mother was a ballerina. Marina and her three older sisters were prepared for artistic careers from childhood - and in the end, all four women became actresses.
Vladi played her first role at the age of 11 - in the Italian film “Summer Storm”. In her youth, she and her sisters created the trio “The Polyakov Sisters,” in which she performed Russian songs and appeared in theatrical productions based on Russian classics.
Vladi worked with directors Jean-Luc Godard, Marco Ferreri and Orson Welles
The actress actively played in films throughout her adolescence and youth - mainly in films filmed in Italy. She often got roles in film adaptations of Russian literary classics. Vladi gained truly widespread fame already at the age of 18 - thanks to the film “The Witch” based on Kuprin’s story “Olesya”. Henri Michel's film received the Silver Bear at the Berlinale.
A year before the release of “The Witch,” Vladi married the popular director and actor Robert Hossein, known in the USSR primarily for his role as Geoffrey de Peyrac in the series of films about Angelique. Hossein gave his wife leading roles in several of his films: “Forgive us our sins”, “You are poison”, “Night of the Spies”.
In 1963, Vladi received the prize for best actress at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in the film by the future Italian classic Marco Ferreri, “Modern History or the Queen Bee.” Ferreri's film, ironic and sometimes mocking of traditional values, drew the attention of star directors of auteur cinema to Vladi. Thus, the artist, who mainly starred in popular, mainstream films, appeared in the films of Orson Welles “Falstaff”, Jean-Luc Godard “Two or Three Things I Know About Her” and Martha Meszáros “There Are Two”.
Marina Vladi was the wife and muse of Vladimir Vysotsky
Marina Vladi became the last wife of the poet, musician and actor Vladimir Vysotsky. For her, marriage to a Soviet artist was her third. The stars met in 1967, when the super-popular Vladi in the USSR came to the Moscow Film Festival. She was advised to go to a performance at the Taganka Theater, in which Vysotsky played, and after that both ended up in the same company in a restaurant, and then visiting mutual friends. According to Vladi, her interest in the Soviet bard awoke after he picked up a guitar and began singing his songs for those gathered.
Vladi and Vysotsky got married in 1970 and were married until the bard’s death in 1980. They, however, had to live in two countries. In order to be able to come to the USSR more often, and also to make it easier for her husband to travel abroad, Vladi even joined the French Communist Party. In the film “There Are Two,” the couple appeared together on screen for the only time. Vysotsky dedicated many songs and poems to his wife. The first such work was the song “Crystal House”. After the death of her husband, Marina wrote a book about their relationship, called “Vladimir, or Interrupted Flight...” Subsequently, she staged a play based on it on the theater stage. The monument to Vysotsky and Vladi was erected in Yekaterinburg in 2006.
