Marina Vlady

Born in Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine to Russian immigrant parents, she won the Best Actress Award at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival for The Conjugal Bed.

From 1955-59 she was married to actor/director Robert Hossein. From 1963-66 she was married to Jean-Claude Brouillet, a French entrepreneur, owner of two airlines and member of French Resistance. She was married to Soviet poet/songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky from 1969 until his death in 1980. She lived with French oncologist Léon Schwartzenberg from the 1980s until his death in 2003.

In 1965 she was a member of the jury at the 4th Moscow International Film Festival.

Marina Vlady's sisters, now all deceased, were the actresses Odile Versois, Hélène Vallier and Olga Baïdar-Poliakoff. Their father was an opera singer of Russian descent, and their mother was a dancer. The sisters began acting as children and for a while pursued a ballet career. She starred alongside Jean-Luc Godard as the female lead in 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (1967), and later portrayed the insightful and protective stepmother in the Italian film Il sapore del grano (aka: The Flavor of Corn) (1986). A rare English language role was as Kate Percy in Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight (1966). Her television credits include the 1983 mini series La Chambre des Dames.

Marina Vlady, 1996

She wrote Vladimir, or the Aborted Flight, a memoir of her relationship with Vladimir Vysotsky.

For a decade, the couple maintained a long-distance relationship as Marina compromised her career in France in order to spend more time in Moscow, and his friends pulled strings for him to travel abroad. She eventually joined the Communist Party of France, which essentially gave her an unlimited-entry visa into the Soviet Union, and provided Vladimir with some immunity against prosecution by the government. The problems of his long-distance relationship with Vlady inspired several of Vysotsky's songs.

She and Léon Schwartzenberg participated in the protests against deportations of Arab workers from France. She accepted a role in a film about a gay couple from Iran.

Vlady is also continuing her career, both as a writer and as an actress. Among others, she has published a book on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a topic that was close to Vysotsky's heart. She has continued acting on stage. She also came out with a one-woman show based on her book about Vysotsky.

Film

• Marina Vlady and Vladimir Vysotsky (1996) [CD], Melodiya, songs by Marina Vladi, words and music by Vladimir Vysotsky