Schneider on the set of What's New Pussycat? (1965) Her career was also overseen by her stepfather Blatzheim who, Schneider indicated, had an unhealthy interest in her.

Īfter her parents' divorce in 1945, Magda took charge of Romy and her brother Wolf-Dieter, eventually supervising the young girl's career, often appearing alongside her daughter. After the summer holidays, she moved to Cologne to join her mother who lived there with the restaurateur and entrepreneur Hans Herbert Blatzheim.

Yes! I have to!' On 12 July 1953, she left the residential school Goldenstein with the degree of Mittlere Reife. Every time I see a nice movie, my first thoughts are about the idea: I definitely have to become an actress. In her diary entry of 10 June 1952, she wrote: 'If it were up to me, I would immediately become an actress. Already during her schooldays, she discovered her passion for acting which is why she was often on stage at theatrical performances at the residential school. In September 1944, Schneider was enrolled in the elementary school of Schönau and from July 1949 she attended the girls' boarding school at Castle Goldenstein, a private secondary school of the Augustinian Canonesses of the Congregation of Notre Dame in Elsbethen near Salzburg. In 1943, they separated and were divorced in 1945. Her parents were very rarely present due to their acting engagements. In her first year, Romy was cared for by a governess. Schneider's mother was German while her father was Austrian.įour weeks after Romy's birth, the parents brought her to Schönau am Königssee in Germany where she and later her brother Wolf-Dieter (born 1941) grew up with their grandparents Franz Xaver and Maria Schneider on the country estate Mariengrund. Her paternal grandmother, Rosa Albach-Retty, was also an actress. Schneider was born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach in Vienna, six months after the Anschluss of Austria into the German Reich, to actors Magda Schneider and Wolf Albach-Retty. Schneider moved to France, where she made successful and critically acclaimed films with some of the most notable film directors of that era. 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). She began her career in the German Heimatfilm genre in the early 1950s when she was 15. Romy Schneider ( German: ( listen) born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach 23 September 1938 – ) was a German-French actress.

Romy Schneider by Giancarlo Botti