Marina Vlady
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Marina Vlady (born Marina de Poliakoff-Baidaroff in Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine on 10 May 1938) is a French actress.
She won the Best Actress Award at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival for The Conjugal Bed. 1955-1959 she was married to actor/director Robert Hossein. 1963-1966 she was married to Jean-Claude Brouillet, a French "entrepreneur", owner of two airlines and member of French Resistance during the WW II. From 1969 until his death in 1980 she was married to Russian poet and songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky.
Marina Vlady is the sister of actresses Odile Versois, Hélène Vallier and Olga Baïdar-Poliakoff; her father was a noted artist of Russian heritage. Like her siblings, she began acting as a child and for a while pursued a ballet career. Projecting a more sensual, alluring image than her sisters, she gained international renown. She was also starred by Jean-Luc Godard in the female lead in 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (1967). One of her few English roles was Kate Percy in Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight. Her TV credits include the 1983 mini series La Chambre des Dames.
She wrote "Vladimir, or the Aborted Flight" a memoir of her great and tragic relationship with Vladimir Vysotsky, translated into Russian, German, Armenian and many other languages. Marina Vlady was Vladimir Vysotsky last wife from 1969 to his death in 1980.
Marina had been married before and had 3 children, while Vladimir had two. Fueled by Marina's exotic status as a Frenchwoman in the Soviet Union, and Vladimir's unmatched popularity in his country, their love was passionate and impulsive. They were married in 1969. For 10 years the two maintained a long-distance relationship as Marina compromised her career in France in order to spend more time in Moscow, and Vladimir's friends pulled strings in order for him to be allowed to travel abroad to stay with his wife. Marina 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, which was becoming weary of his covertly anti-Soviet lyrics and his odds-defying popularity with the masses. The problems of his long-distance relationship with Vlady inspired several of Vysotsky's songs.