Departures of note

Marina Vlady was a French-Russian actress who became one of the leading young stars of French cinema in the 1950s, breaking through in André Cayatte's Avant le déluge (1954), for which she received the Suzanne-Bianchetti Prize. Born in Clichy to White Russian émigré parents, she was one of the four Poliakoff sisters, all of whom pursued acting careers. She won the Best Actress award at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival for Marco Ferreri's The Conjugal Bed, and went on to appear in Jean-Luc Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967) and Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight (1966), among dozens of films across France, Italy and beyond.

Beyond cinema, Vlady worked extensively in television and theatre, recorded several albums, and published thirteen books, including the memoir Vladimir, or the Aborted Flight about her third husband, the Soviet singer and poet Vladimir Vysotsky, to whom she was married from 1970 until his death in 1980. Politically engaged, she signed the 1971 Manifesto of the 343 advocating for abortion rights and was active in left-wing causes. She died on 24 September 2026 at the age of 88.