Marina Vlady, 1938 – 2026

French actress Marina Vlady, 88, died on Sept. 24. The sister of actresses Odile Versois, Hélène Vallier, and Olga Baïdar-Poliakoff, Vlady was best known in the US for her roles in The Conjugal Bed (for which she won a Best Actress award at Cannes), Jean-Luc Godard’s Two or Three Things I Know About Her, and Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight. She was active in films and TV from the 1950s-80s, though she was working as recently as 2018’s TV series Tu Vivras ma Fille. Vlady’s private life was as colorful as her film roles: her husbands and partners included actor and director Robert Hossein and Russian poet and songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky. A member of the Communist Party, she also campaigned for abortion and gay rights, and for Arab immigrants in France. She told writer Aurélien Ferenczi that The Conjugal Bed was “A magnificent film - funny, delusional and anti-clerical! The film earned me the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1963. It was completely unexpected. I was told the day before; I fell off my chair and fast slipped on a little black dress!”