Marina Vlady’s family announced she died at home on September 24, 2026, at 88, surrounded by loved ones and animals. AFP counted more than 80 films in her career. She also worked in television, theater, music, and books, moving between popular productions and films by major European directors including Jean-Luc Godard and Orson Welles.
Vlady was born Catherine Marina de Poliakoff-Baidaroff in Clichy, outside Paris, on May 10, 1938. Her father, Vladimir, was an opera singer and former aviator, and her mother, Militza, was a dancer. She and her three sisters also worked in the arts under the professional names Odile Versois, Hélène Vallier, Olga Varen, and Marina Vlady.
One early landmark was André Cayatte’s Avant le déluge (1954). The AFP account says it marked the start of her career and brought the then-16-year-old Vlady the Suzanne-Bianchetti prize, an award for a promising actress. The recognition came at the start of a working life that would continue across languages, collaborators, and media.
Her later screen credits moved between styles. Jean Delannoy’s La Princesse de Clèves (1961) was a French period adaptation; Marco Ferreri’s L’Ape Regina (1963), released in France as Le Lit conjugal, brought her Cannes acting prize. She later appeared in Orson Welles’s Falstaff (1965), Jean-Luc Godard’s Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle (1967), and Bertrand Tavernier’s Que la fête commence. Le Monde also lists Henri Colpi’s Mona, l’étoile sans nom, Michel Mitrani’s La Nuit bulgare, and Miklós Jancsó’s Sirocco d’hiver. AFP names Chris Marker and Ettore Scola among her other collaborators. AFP also notes her popular comedies, including Jean Yanne’s Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil.
In 1955, Vlady married theater director Robert Hossein, who cast her in several of his films. The couple had two sons. AFP later records a third son from her relationship with adventurer Jean-Claude Brouillet. These family details appear in the same public account that traces a life spent among artists, directors, and performers.
In Le Temps de vivre (1969), directed by Bernard Paul, Vlady joined a cooperative filmmaking effort, Le Monde reports. That production model stands beside the director-led titles in her filmography. It documents another kind of creative work: a project organized around collective production as well as an individual performance.
Music was another shared project. Vlady recorded two albums of Russian songs with her sisters as Les Soeurs Poliakoff, the AFP account says. Le Monde reports that the group’s first record received the Académie Charles-Cros prize. The sisters had also appeared together in Chekhov’s Three Sisters in 1966, bringing their shared work from the theater stage to recorded music.
Television offered another stage for her performances. Le Monde notes that Vlady appeared in adaptations of writers including Joseph Conrad, Guy de Maupassant, Honoré de Balzac, and Leo Tolstoy. The productions carried her work into literary stories in a different form from her film roles.
Vlady’s marriage to Russian singer and poet Vladimir Vysotsky in 1969 took her to Moscow, where she lived until his death in 1980, according to AFP. She wrote about their relationship in Vladimir ou le vol arrêté, published in 1987 and later adapted for the stage. The book joined a body of roughly ten works that also included her 2005 memoir, 24 images/second.
Her sons also remembered Vlady’s engagement in public causes. Their family statement sent to AFP recalled that her activism began during the Algerian War, included the Manifesto of the 343, and later supported undocumented people and housing rights. With her last partner, Léon Schwartzenberg, she helped create Droit au logement (DAL), an association focused on the right to housing. Their account placed civic involvement alongside her artistic work.
Her family remembered a long life filled with work, relationships, and public causes. The films, recordings, books, and stage projects she left behind preserve a public record of that life, built across different forms and with many collaborators.
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