Roger Vadim

Roger Vadim (26 January 1928 – 11 February 2000) was a French screenwriter, film director/and producer, as well as an author and occasional actor.

Early life

Vadim was born as Roger Vladimir Plemiannikov in Paris. His father, Igor Nikolaevich Plemiannikov (И́горь Никола́евич Племя́нников), a White Russian military officer and pianist, had emigrated from Ukraine and became a naturalized French citizen, and was a vice consul of France to Egypt, stationed in Alexandria. His mother, Marie-Antoinette (née Ardilouze), was a French actress. Although Vadim lived in luxury 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 was functioning as a way-station for Jews and other fugitives fleeing Nazism.

Vadim studied journalism and writing at the University of Paris, without graduating. 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.