Marina Vlady

Marina Vlady (born Marina de Poliakoff-Baidaroff; 10 May, 1938 - died 24 September, 2026) was a French actress who made her film debut at 11. She has appeared in more than 100 feature films and television productions. She arrived as the blond bombshell and was the main attraction in "La sorcière" (1956).

Catherine Marina de Poliakoff-Baïdaroff was born in Clichy on 10 May 1938, to White Russian immigrant parents. Her father, Vladimir Poliakoff, was an opera singer, and her mother, Militza, was a dancer. Her sisters, now all deceased, were the actresses Odile Versois, Hélène Vallier and Olga Baïdar-Poliakoff. The sisters began acting as children and, for a while, pursued a ballet career.

Vlady won the Best Actress Award at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival for The Conjugal Bed. In 1965, she was a member of the jury at the 4th Moscow International Film Festival.

She starred in Jean-Luc Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967), and later portrayed the insightful and protective stepmother in the Italian film The Flavor of Corn (1986). A rare English language role was as Kate Percy in Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight (1966).

Her television credits include the 1983 mini-series La Chambre des Dames.

In 1971, Vlady signed the Manifesto of the 343, which publicly declared she had an abortion as a way to advocate for abortion, even though the procedure was illegal in France at the time.