Sarah Bernhardt in the role of Floria Tosca 1887.

Sarah Bernhardt, the incomparable French stage actress and the first great movie star. Born Sarah-Marie-Henriette Rosine Bernard 22 March 1844 Paris, France Died 26 March 1923 (aged 78), Paris, France Years active 1862-1923 Spouse(s) Ambroise Aristide Damala (1882-1889) Bernhardt had an affair with a Belgian nobleman, Charles-Joseph Eugène Henri, Prince de Ligne, with whom she had her only child, Maurice Bernhardt, in 1864. He married a Polish princess, Maria Jablonowska. Later, close friends included several artists, most notably Gustave Doré and Georges Clarin, and actors Mounet-Sully and Lou Tellegen, as well as the famous French author Victor Hugo. Alphonse Mucha based several of his iconic Art Nouveau works on her. Her friendship with Louise Abbema, a French impressionist painter 14 years her junior, was so close and passionate that the two women were rumored to be lovers. 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. During the latter years of this marriage, Bernhardt was said to have been involved in an affair with the Prince of Wales, who later became Edward VII.

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