Romy Schneider & Alain Delon - Don't say sorry

Romy Schneider (23 September 1938 – 29 May 1982) was a film actress born in Vienna who held German and French citizenship. She started her career in the German Heimatfilm genre in the early 1950s when she was 15. From 1955 to 1957, she played the central character of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the Austrian Sissi trilogy. Schneider moved to France where she made successful and critically acclaimed films with some of the most notable film directors of that era.

Romy Schneider's first film, made when she was 15, was Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht (When the White Lilacs Bloom Again) in 1953, credited as Romy Schneider-Albach. In 1954, Schneider for the first time portrayed a royal, playing a young Queen Victoria in the Austrian film Mädchenjahre einer Königin (known in the U.S. as The Story of Vickie and in Britain as Victoria in Dover). Schneider's breakthrough came with her portrayal of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, in the romantic biopic Sissi (1955) and its two sequels, Sissi – The Young Empress (1956) and Sissi – Fateful Years of an Empress (1957), all with Karlheinz Böhm, who became a close friend. Less stereotypical films during this busy period include The Girl and the Legend (1957), working with a young Horst Buchholz, and Monpti (1957), directed by Helmut Käutner, again with Buchholz.

Schneider soon starred in Christine (1958), a remake of Max Ophüls's 1933 film Liebelei (itself based upon a play by Arthur Schnitzler and starring her mother Magda Schneider). It was during the filming of Christine that Schneider fell in love with French actor Alain Delon, who co-starred in the movie. She left Germany to join him in Paris and they announced their engagement in 1959.

Schneider decided to live and to work in France, slowly gaining the interest of film directors such as Orson Welles for The Trial (1962), based upon Franz Kafka's The Trial and was introduced by Delon to Luchino Visconti.

Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon (French: [alɛ̃ dəlɔ̃]; born 8 November 1935) is a French actor and businessman.

Delon became one of Europe's most prominent actors and screen sex symbols in the 1960s. He achieved critical acclaim for roles in films such as Rocco and His Brothers (1960), Purple Noon (1960), L'Eclisse (1962), The Leopard (1963), Lost Command (1966) and Le Samouraï (1967). Over the course of his career Delon worked with many well known directors, including Luchino Visconti, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Michelangelo Antonioni and Louis Malle.

Delon acquired Swiss citizenship on 23 September 1999, and the company managing products sold under his name is based in Geneva. He resides in Chêne-Bougeries in the canton of Geneva.

He started with a small part in an all-star anthology for MGM, The Yellow Rolls Royce (1965), opposite Shirley Maclaine. It was popular although Delon had little to do.

He had his first English-language lead in Once a Thief, where he co-starred with Ann-Margret. It was based on a novel by Zekial Marko who had written Any Number Can Win, but it was not as successful. It was financed by MGM who announced Delon would appear in a Western Ready for the Tiger directed by Sam Peckinpah, but the film was never made.[15]

Instead Delon signed a three-picture deal with Columbia, for whom he appeared in the big budget action film Lost Command (1966), playing a member of the French Foreign Legion, alongside Anthony Quinn and Claudia Cardinal. The studio also announced that he would appear in the biopic Cervantes, but this was never made.[16]

Universal Studios used Delon in a Western, opposite Dean Martin, Texas Across the River. Ray Stark wanted to use him in The Night of the Iguana and This Property is Condemned.[17][18] He did not appear in either film but was in that producer's Is Paris Burning?, directed by Rene Clement, playing Jacques Chaban-Delmas. This was a massive hit in France but performed disappointingly at the US box office - as did all of Delon's Hollywood financed films.

Delon remained a massive star in France. Along with Steve McQueen and Sean Connery he was one of the biggest stars in Japan.[19] However he could not make headway in America.