Romy Schneider was born in Vienna in 1938, six months after the Nazis annexed Austria. Her father and paternal grandmother acted in the theater; her mother starred in film musicals. Schneider began in the family biz at 15, with a role in the 1953 film When the White Lilacs Bloom Again. Two years later, she became a household name when she starred in Sissi, the first film in a trilogy about Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Her tiny waist, her perfect nose, her sweet, sweet smile—for many, she would always be Sissi. Indeed, 20 years after that, in Luchino Visconti’s Ludwig (1973), she would again play Sissi, only by then she had grown into an imperious beauty. Schneider made movies in Europe and Hollywood, did stage work, and had affairs with prominent men. She died in 1985, only 43, from a heart attack. The Metrograph bends the knee to this marvelous actress with a series of eight films. They date from 1958 (Mädchen in Uniform) to 1975 (That Most Important Thing: Love). In between, there she is in La Piscine (1969)—Aphrodite in a white swimsuit. —Laura Jacobs