French and Russian actress, singer and writer Marina Vlady, the last wife of poet and bard Vladimir Vysotsky, has died at the age of 88. French television channel BFV TV reported her death, according to NUR.KZ via Izvestia, as reported by infohub.kz.
"French-Russian actress, singer and writer Marina Vlady died this Thursday, September 24. She was 88 years old," the publication quoted the TV channel as saying.
Born Catherine-Marina Poliakova-Baidarova on May 10, 1938, in Clichy to a family of Russian émigrés who left Russia after the 1917 revolution. Her father, opera singer Vladimir Poliakov-Baidarov, left Russia during World War I. Her mother, ballerina Militsa Envald, daughter of a Russian general, emigrated to France in 1919.
Vlady began her career as a young dancer at the Paris Opera, but soon abandoned a ballet career for acting. She took her stage name after her father's death. She got her first role at age ten in Jean Guéré's film "Summer Storm" (1949).
At just 17, she married director Robert Hossein, in whose four films she appeared. Together they became one of the most prominent couples in cinema of that time.
In 1963, the actress won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, where the jury recognized her work in Marco Ferreri's film "The Conjugal Bed".
From 1970 to 1980, Marina Vlady was married to poet and bard Vladimir Vysotsky. They met in 1967 and registered their marriage in 1970. For Marina, Vysotsky was her third husband, and the marriage lasted until the singer's death in 1980.
After Vysotsky's death, Vlady married for the fourth time to oncologist Léon Schwartzenberg. She lived with him for 23 years; her last husband died in 2003.
From her first marriage to Hossein, she had two sons, Igor and Peter.