Roger Vadim Plemiannikov (French: [ʁɔʒe vadim]; 26 January 1928 – 11 February 2000) was a French screenwriter, film director, and producer, as well as an author, artist, and occasional actor. His best-known works are visually lavish films with erotic qualities, such as And God Created Woman (1956), Blood and Roses (1960), The Game Is Over (1966), Barbarella (1968), and Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971).
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Early life
Vadim was born Roger Vadim Plemiannikov in Paris. His father, Igor Nikolaevich Plemiannikov, a native of Kyiv hailing from an old noble family, White military officer and pianist, he fled to France to escape the horrors of the revolution and the civil war and become a naturalized French citizen. He was a vice consul of France to Egypt, stationed in Alexandria, later posting to Mersin, Turkey as a consul. Vadim's mother, Marie-Antoinette (née Ardilouze), was a stage actress. He had one sister, Hélène Plemiannikov (1929–2022). Although Vadim lived as a diplomat's child in Northern Africa and the Middle East in his early youth, the death of his father when Vadim was nine years old caused the family to return to France, where his mother found work running a hostel in the French Alps, which functioned as a way-station for Jews and other fugitives fleeing Nazism.
Vadim studied journalism and writing at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po), without graduating.
Film career
At age 19, he became assistant to film director Marc Allégret, whom he met while working at the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt, and for whom he worked on several screenplays. He was an assistant director on Allegret's Blanche Fury (1948), a commercially unsuccessful melodrama which Allegret made for a British company in English. Vadim was one of several writers on Allegret's French-British The Naked Heart (1950), aka Maria Chapdelaine, starring Michèle Morgan, as well as serving as assistant director. It was shot in French and English versions. Blackmailed (1951) was another film Allegret directed in England, starring Mai Zetterling and Dirk Bogarde; Vadim was credited as one of the writers. He was also one of several writers on Allegret's, La demoiselle et son revenant (1952).
Vadim did the screenplay and commentary for a documentary, Le gouffre de la Pierre Saint-Marti (1953), and was assistant director on Allegret's Julietta (1953), a popular romance with Jean Marais, Dany Robin and Jeanne Moreau. Vadim wrote Allegret's Loves of Three Queens (1954), with Hedy Lamarr. Vadim had begun a relationship with model-actress Brigitte Bardot. She was given a good role in a drama directed by Allegret, School for Love (1953), aka Futures Vedettes, starring Jean Marais; Vadim wrote the script with Allegret. The film was a commercial disappointment. However the next collaboration between Allegret, Bardot and Vadim, Plucking the Daisy (1956), aka Mam'selle Striptease, was a huge success at the French box office. So too was Naughty Girl (1956), with Bardot. This allowed Vadim to get backing for his first movie as director.
Vadim's first film as director was based on an original story of his, And God Created Woman (1956). Starring Bardot, Curt Jurgens and Christian Marquand and produced by Raoul Levy it was not only a major success in France, but around the world, and established Bardot as a global icon. Vadim followed it with No Sun in Venice (1957) starring Françoise Arnoul and Marquand, produced by Levy, which was considerably less popular than And God Created Woman. Levy, Vadim and Bardot were to make Paris by Night with Frank Sinatra but Bardot refused to spend months in the US and Sinatra felt likewise about filming in France. Instead Vadim made The Night Heaven Fell (1958), starring Bardot and Stephen Boyd. He was one of several writers on Allegret's popular comedy, Be Beautiful But Shut Up (1958), starring Mylène Demongeot.
Vadim's next film was an adaptation of the book Les liaisons dangereuses (1959), which he wrote and directed. It starred Moreau, Gérard Philipe (in his final film) and Annette Strøyberg, a Danish model who became Vadim's second wife. The film became a huge hit in France. Strøyberg was also in the vampire film Blood and Roses (1960). Vadim was reunited with Bardot for Please, Not Now! (1961), a popular comedy. He was one of several directors of the anthology film, The Seven Deadly Sins (1962).
Personal life
Romances
Vadim was celebrated for his romances and marriages to young beautiful actresses. In his mid-30s, he lived with the still-teenaged Catherine Deneuve, by whom he had a son, Christian Vadim, between his marriages to Strøyberg and Fonda. He was also involved with Margaret Markov, Sylvia Kristel and Cindy Pickett. Later, he cohabited with screenwriter Ann Biderman for several years, announcing their engagement in 1984, but the couple never wed.
Marriages
Brigitte Bardot, 20 December 1952 – 6 December 1957 (divorced)
Annette Strøyberg, 17 June 1958 – 14 March 1961 (divorced); 1 daughter (Nathalie) b. 7 December 1957
Jane Fonda, 14 August 1965 – 16 January 1973 (divorced); 1 daughter (Vanessa) b. 28 September 1968
Catherine Schneider, 13 December 1975 – 10 June 1977 (divorced); 1 son (Vania) b. 6 April 1974
Marie-Christine Barrault, 21 December 1990 – 11 February 2000 (his death)
He also had two stepsons from his marriage to Schneider (younger sister of novelist Dominique Schneidre and heiress to the Schneider-Creusot steel and armaments firm), as well as adult stepchildren from Barrault's first marriage to Daniel Toscan du Plantier, also a friend of Vadim's, who called him "a happy man. He was someone in whom there was so much satisfaction to the end of his life. The films merely reflected his happiness." Nathalie, his eldest daughter, told Fonda biographer Patricia Bosworth: "Jane was the love of my father's life."
Writing
In addition to Vadim's theatre and film work, he also wrote several books, including the memoirs "Memoires du Diable", "Le Gout du Bonheur: Souvenirs 1940–1958" and an autobiography, D'une étoile à l'autre (From One Star to the Next) as well as a tell-all about his most famous exes, Bardot, Deneuve & Fonda: My Life with the Three Most Beautiful Women in the World, published in 1986. "My attitude is that if this book makes me a little money it will be a tiny compensation for all the money I helped those actresses make", Vadim explained.
He also wrote several plays and books of fiction, including L'ange affamé.
Death
Vadim died of lymphoma at age 72 on 11 February 2000. Widow Barrault and ex-wives Bardot, Fonda, Schneider and Strøyberg all attended his funeral; ex-girlfriends Biderman and Deneuve did not. He is buried at St. Tropez Cemetery.
Filmography
Actor
Pétrus (1946)
School for Love (1955)
Sweet and Sour (1963)
Ciao! Manhattan (1972)
The Assassinated Young Girl (1974)
Rich and Famous (1981)
Into the Night (1985)
