Pola Negri

Pola Negri was a Polish stage and film actress and singer who achieved worldwide fame during the silent and golden eras of Hollywood and European cinema. She was known for her tragedienne and femme fatale roles, as well as being a sex symbol. She started her career in Warsaw, where she became a popular theater actress. She moved to Germany in 1917, where she starred in many silent films directed by Ernst Lubitsch. She was the first European actress to be contracted by Hollywood, and worked for Paramount Pictures from 1922 to 1928. She was romantically linked to Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino, whose death she publicly mourned. She returned to Europe in the 1930s, where she continued to make films and record songs. She also appeared in some Nazi propaganda films, which damaged her reputation in the US. She came back to America in 1941, but her career never recovered. She made only two more films, the last one being The Moon-Spinners in 1964. She spent the rest of her life in San Antonio, Texas, where she died of pneumonia in 1987 at the age of 90.