Marina Vlady Dies at 88 at Her Home in France

French Russian actress, singer and writer Marina Vlady died on Thursday, September 24, at the age of 88. She died at home, her family announced to the AFP news agency on Friday, September 25. The news was first reported by the French outlets Franceinfo and Orange, and picked up in Serbia by Espreso, which cited the newspaper Le Figaro.

She was born in 1938 into a Russian family of artists, under the name Marina Catherine de Poliakoff Baidarov. Her career began when she was very young, with a role in André Cayatte’s 1954 film “Before the Flood,” which earned her the Susanne Bianchetti award for most promising actress at just 16. Seven years later she became known for her part in Jean Delannoy’s “The Princess of Clèves.” Her career reached its peak in 1963, when she won the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for Marco Ferreri’s “The Conjugal Bed.”

Over the course of her career she appeared in more than 80 films and worked with Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Bertrand Tavernier and Ettore Scola. She also featured in popular comedies of the 1970s, including Jean Yanne’s “Everyone Is Beautiful, Everyone Is Kind.” Together with her sisters, performing as the Poliakoff Sisters, she recorded two music albums, and she wrote around a dozen books, among them the 2005 memoir “24 images/secondes.” She was active outside film as well: she supported movements opposing the war in Algeria, signed the Manifesto of the 343, and later campaigned for the rights of undocumented migrants.

Her love story with Vladimir Vysotsky

A particularly significant chapter of her life was her marriage to Soviet poet and singer Vladimir Vysotsky. They met in Moscow, at the Taganka Theatre, and she later wrote a book about their relationship, “Vladimir, or the Interrupted Flight.” In early 2026 she handed their correspondence over to the Russian State Archive, asking that the letters not be published during her lifetime.

Sources differ on the exact year they married. Espreso reports 1970, while the French news agencies AFP and Orange give 1969. Both agree that the relationship, which the actress maintained between Paris and Moscow, lasted until Vysotsky’s death in 1980.

Three or four marriages

Accounts of how many times she married also differ. Espreso says Marina Vlady was married four times: to director Robert Hossein, to Vladimir Vysotsky, to businessman Jean-Claude Brouillet and to oncologist Leon Schwartzenberg. The French agencies AFP and Orange count three marriages and list Schwartzenberg as her last life partner rather than a husband. Together with him she co-founded Droit au Logement, an association advocating for the right to housing. From the 1990s onward she devoted herself mainly to theatre.

Her children said in a statement to AFP that she died “at home, surrounded by her loved ones and her pets.” They added that she leaves behind “a long and beautiful life, lived fully to the end.”

“at home, surrounded by her loved ones and her pets”

Marina Vlady leaves behind a filmography of more than 80 titles and a decade of turbulent love that inspired one of her best known books. A funeral has not yet been announced.