The trilogy's popularity seemed linked to some lingering post- World War II unease in West Germany, maintained critic Ute Schneider. The film was a huge success in West Germany and Austria at the time and was quickly followed by two sequels that chronicled the beloved princess's 1854 wedding and subsequently tragic personal life. Mädchenjahre einer Königen was written and directed by veteran Austrian filmmaker Ernst Marischka, and its success led to Schneider being cast in 1955's Sissi, the first in a trilogy of films about Elisabeth, the wife of Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef.

Schneider was offered more parts, including a light biopicĪbout the adolescence of Queen Victoria, Mädchenjahre einer Königen (Girlhood of a Queen). A director of one of her mother's films offered a part playing the on-screen daughter, and Wenn der weisse Flieder wieder blüht (When the White Lilacs Bloom Again) was a box-office success in 1953.

Her ambition was to become a painter, a career idea she jettisoned after her film career was suddenly launched at the age of 15. During World War II, Schneider's parents separated, and after the age of four she lived with her mother and maternal grandparents in Berchtesgaden, Germany, where she attended school.Īs a teen, Schneider attended a school in Salzburg, Austria, where she performed in plays and participated in several sports. Schneider's mother, meanwhile, was a film actress in Germany during in the 1930s, appearing in the light comedies and toothless historical epics that were part of the Nazi government's propaganda effort. Her paternal grandmother, Rosa Albach-Retty, had been a famous Vienna stage actress of an earlier era. She was the third generation in a theatrical family on the side of her father, Wolf Albach-Retty, who regularly appeared with the Vienna Volkstheater.

Schneider was born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach-Retty on September 23, 1938, in Vienna, Austria, and during her early years 'Romy' became the shortened version of her given name. 'Elegant and sensuous, she had a striking screen presence,' noted Schneider's Times of London obituary from 1982, 'but despite excellent performances of both comic and dramatic parts, her career did not quite fulfil its early promise.' Austrian-born actress Romy Schneider (1938–1982) went from playing Bavarian princesses in frothy historical dramas to working with some of the most influential and daring European filmmakers of her era during the 1960s and 1970s.

Romy Schneider by Giancarlo Botti