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Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt was a French stage actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils, Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo, Fédora and La Tosca by Victorien Sardou, and L'Aiglon by Edmond Rostand. She played female and male roles, including Shakespeare's Hamlet. Rostand called her "the queen of the pose and the princess of the gesture", and Hugo praised her "golden voice". She made several theatrical tours worldwide and was one of the early prominent actresses to make sound recordings and act in motion pictures. She was also an accomplished visual artist, as a painter and particularly as a sculptor.
entertainment · French stage actress (1844–1923) · also Sarah Bernhardt, Bernhardt
Born 25 September 1844 · Died 23 March 1923 · Q4605
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Sarah Bernhardt addresses crowd in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, 1917
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s family paid for her education, insisted she be baptized as a Catholic, and left a large sum to be paid when she came of age. Her mother traveled frequently, and saw little of her daughter. She placed Bernhardt with a nurse in Brittany, then in a cottage in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. When Bernhardt was seven, her mother sent her to a boarding school for young ladies in the Paris suburb of Auteuil, paid with funds from her father
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“Me pray? Never! I'm an atheist.”
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“She has the sovereign grace, the penetrating charm, the I don”
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“confused, sorry, and delighted—because he loved me the way people love in plays at the theater.”
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“s family paid for her education, insisted she be baptized as a Catholic, and left a large sum to be paid when she came of age. Her mother traveled frequently, and saw little of her daughter. She placed Bernhardt with a nurse in Brittany, then in a cottage in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. When Bernhardt was seven, her mother sent her to a boarding school for young ladies in the Paris suburb of Auteuil, paid with funds from her father”
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Sortir à Paris: Días del Patrimonio 2026: la histórica villa de Asnières recibió a Sarah Bernhardt y Rosa Bonheur
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Sortir à Paris: Heritage Days 2026: this historic villa in Asnières welcomed Sarah Bernhardt and Rosa Bonheur
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MutualArt.com: Sarah Bernhardt
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Moviefone: The Divine Sarah Bernhardt - Where to Watch
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20233 items
Washington Examiner: Sarah Bernhardt and the invention of celebrity
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Sun Sentinel: Sarah Bernhardt still ‘immortal’ 100 years after her death
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WSLS 10: Paris exhibit celebrates 'first celebrity' Sarah Bernhardt
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20181 item
Roundabout Theatre Company produced Theresa Rebeck's play Bernhardt/Hamlet
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A painting by Abbéma, depicting the two on a boat ride on the lake in the bois de Boulogne, was donated to the Comédie-Française
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It was renamed the Théâtre de la Ville, which is the name it has today
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Bernhardt was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star located at 1751 Vine Street
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Then in 1957 became the Théâtre des Nations
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“The Art of the Theatre (1925), p. 171”
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Was preparing to make La Voyante, another motion picture from her own home, directed by Sacha Guitry
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19222 items
As her health declined, she abruptly sold it and never returned
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Began rehearsing a new play by Sacha Guitry, called Un Sujet de Roman
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Bernhardt made her last tour of the French provinces, lecturing about theatre and reciting the poetry of Rostand
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Resumed acting in her theatre, usually performing single acts of classics such as Racine's Athelée, which did not require much movement
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Returned to New York and boarded a ship to France, landing in Bordeaux on 11 November 1918, the day that the armistice was signed ending the First World War
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Made a film called Mothers of France (Mères Françaises)
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And made two short films on patriotic themes, one based on the story of Joan of Arc, the other called Mothers of France
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Went as usual to her holiday home on Belle-Île with her family and close friends
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The Literary Digest reported that she became vegetarian to lose weight and regain her figure
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19121 item
The pioneer American producer Adolph Zukor came to London and filmed her performing scenes from her stage play Queen Elizabeth with her lover Tellegen, with Tellegen in the role of Lord Essex
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19091 item
Again played the 19-year-old Joan of Arc in Le Procès de Jeanne d'Arc by Émile Moreau
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“Sarah was wonderful and terrible. Oh, to see her, and to hear her, a wild creature, a gazelle with a beautiful panther's fascination and fury, laughing in musical French, screaming with true panther cry, sobbing and sighing like a deer sobs, wounded to the death...She is not pretty, her voice is not sweet, but there is the incarnation of wild emotion that we share with all living things...”
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Bernhardt made a second motion picture, La Tosca
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English-language edition: My Double Life: Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt at Google Books
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The British actress Ellen Terry wrote "How marvelous Sarah Bernhardt was
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Had another unsuccessful role playing another masculine character in Werther, a gloomy adaptation of the story by German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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At the invitation of the French ministry of culture, she took part in the first cultural exchange between Germany and France since the 1870 war
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19002 items
Bernhardt presented L'Aiglon, a new play by Rostand
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The cameraman who had shot the first films for the Lumière brothers, Clément Maurice, approached Bernhardt and asked her to make a film out of a scene from her stage production of Hamlet
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18982 items
Had another success, in the play Lorenzaccio, playing the male lead role in a Renaissance revenge drama written in 1834 by Alfred de Musset, but never before actually staged
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Performed the female lead in the controversial play La Ville Morte by the Italian poet and playwright Gabriele D'Annunzio; the play was fiercely attacked by critics because of its theme of incest between brother and
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Hired Czech artist Alphonse Mucha to design the first of a series of posters for her play Gismonda
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Toured Italy, Egypt, Turkey, Sweden, Norway, and Russia
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Acted in a stage version of the controversial drama Thérèse Raquin by Emile Zola
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When her debts mounted, she sold the house
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In homage to Victor Hugo, who had died a few months earlier, she staged one of his older plays, Marion de Lorme, written in 1831, but the play was outdated and her role did not give her a chance to show her talents
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18841 item
Sigmund Freud saw Bernhardt perform Theodora, writing:
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18821 item
In Paris, Bernhardt met a Greek diplomat, Aristide Damala (known in France by his stage name Jacques Damala), who was 11 years her junior, and notorious for his romantic affairs
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Made an Art Nouveau decorative bronze inkwell, a self-portrait with bat wings and a fish tail, possibly inspired by her 1874 performance in Le Sphinx
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During the Paris Universal Exposition, she took a flight over Paris with balloonist Pierre Giffard and painter Georges Clairin, in a balloon decorated with the name of her current character, Doña Sol
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Had another success as Doña Sol in Hernani, a tragedy written 47 years earlier by Victor Hugo
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Bernhardt constructed a large townhouse at 35 rue Fortuny in the 17th arrondissement, not far from Parc Monceau, for her family, servants, and animals
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“Opis: o rzeźbach Sarah Bernhardt wystawianych w paryskim Salonie w latach 1874–1896.”
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With just 74 hours to learn the lines and practice the part, she played the lead in Racine's Phèdre, playing opposite the celebrated tragedian, Jean Mounet-Sully, who soon became her lover
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18722 items
Wrote in his Carnets, "It is the first time this play has really been played
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The critic Théodore de Banville wrote that Bernhardt "declaimed like a bluebird sings, like the wind sighs, like the water murmurs
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As she became more prosperous, she moved to a larger seven-room apartment at 16 rue Auber in the center of Paris
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A fire completely destroyed her apartment, along with all of her belongings
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Bernhardt learned that her father had died overseas
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But it quickly became her most performed and most famous role
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With Bernhardt playing the role of the Queen of Spain
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And five weeks later, her father remarried
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