Profile
Sarah Bernhardt
Actress
Female
Born
Oct 23, 1844
Hometown
Paris
Died
Mar 26, 1923
Death Place
Paris
Other Names
Bernardt, Rosine
Sarah Bernhardt was a French stage and early film actress, and has been referred to as "the most famous actress the world has ever known". Bernhardt made her fame on the stages of France in the 1870s, and was soon in demand in Europe and the Americas.… Read More
Romance
Check out the latest love interests for Sarah Bernhardt.
News + Updates
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Timeline
Learn about the memorable moments in the evolution of Sarah Bernhardt.
CHILDHOOD
1844
Birth
Born on October 22, 1844.
TEENAGE
1860
15 Years Old
When Sarah was young her mother sent her to Grandchamp, an Augustine convent school near Versailles In 1860 she began attending The Conservatoire de Musique at Déclemation in Paris and eventually became a student at the Comédie Française where she would have her acting debut (August 11, 1862) in the title role of Racine's Iphigénie to lackluster reviews.
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1862
17 Years Old
Bernhardt's stage career started in 1862 while she was a student at the Comédie-Française, France's most prestigious theater.
1864
19 Years Old
She decided to leave France, and soon ended up in Belgium, where she became the mistress of Henri, Prince de Ligne, and gave birth to their son, Maurice, in 1864.
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TWENTIES
1865
20 Years Old
She was not entirely successful at the conservatory, however, and left to become a courtesan by 1865.
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1866
21 Years Old
Sarah secured a contract at the Théâtre de L’Odéon where she began performing in 1866.
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1871
26 Years Old
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Sarah's birth records were lost in a fire in 1871, but in order to prove French citizenship, necessary for Légion d'honneur eligibility, she created false birth records, on which she was the daughter of "Judith van Hard" and "Edouard Bernardt" from Le Havre, in later stories either a law student, accountant, naval cadet or naval officer.
THIRTIES
1882
37 Years Old
She later married Greek-born actor Aristides Damala (known in France by the stage name Jacques Damala) in London in 1882, but the marriage, which legally endured until Damala's death in 1889 at age 34, quickly collapsed, largely due to Damala's dependence on morphine.
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FORTIES
1887
42 Years Old
She even traveled to Cuba and performed in the Sauto Theater, in Matanzas, in 1887.
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FIFTIES
1899
54 Years Old
In 1899 Berhardt took over the former Théâtre des Nations on the Place du Châtelet, renaming it the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt and opening on 21 January in one of her most admired parts, the title role in Victorien Sardou's La Tosca.
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1900
55 Years Old
Bernhardt was one of the pioneer silent movie actresses, debuting as Hamlet in the two-minute long film Le Duel d'Hamlet in 1900. (Technically, this was not a silent film, and in fact, it is cited as one of the first examples of a sound and moving image syncing system created with the new phono-cinema-theatre system.) She went on to star in eight motion pictures and two biographical films in all.
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LATE ADULTHOOD
1905
60 Years Old
In 1905, while performing in Victorien Sardou's La Tosca in Teatro Lírico do Rio de Janeiro, Bernhardt injured her right knee when jumping off the parapet in the final scene.
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By 1915, gangrene had set in and her entire right leg was amputated; she was required to use a wheelchair for several months.
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1923
78 Years Old
Sarah Bernhardt died from uremia following kidney failure in 1923; she is believed to have been 78 years old.
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Original Authors of this text are noted on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Bernhardt.
Text is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Text is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.