Biography:
Born Nadia Kujnir-Herescu in Bucharest, Romania, on November 23, 1923, to a
Russian father and a Bessarabian mother, the future actress Nadia Gray was
raised there. She met first husband Constantin Cantacuzino (1905-1958), a
Romanian aviator and noted WWII fighter ace, while she was a passenger on
one of his commercial air flights. She couple fled the country during the
Communist takeover of Romania in the late 1940s and emigrated to Paris.
There Nadia enjoyed a vast international career a...
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s a Cosmopolitan lead and
second lead on stage and in films. The couple eventually settled in Spain.
She made her film debut in a leading role as a young waitress who yearns to
be a star in the French-Austrian co-production of Inconnu d'un soir, L'
(1949) and went on to essay a number of more mature, sophisticated,
glamorous patricians in European films, often a continental jetsetter or
bourgeoisie type. Earlier roles that led to European stardom included her
countess in Monseigneur (1949), the woman in love with a thief in The Spider
and the Fly (1949), and the role of Cristina Versini in the Italian
technicolor biopic of the composer _Puccini (1952)_. Her roster of
continental male co-stars went on to include such legendary stalwarts as
Marcello Mastroianni, 'Vittorio de Sica', Rossano Brazzi, Errol Flynn,
Maurice Ronet and Gabriele Ferzetti. Among her scattered appearances in
English-speaking productions were a mixture of adventures, dramas, comedies
and horrors including Valley of Eagles (1951) with John McCallum and Jack
Warner, Night Without Stars (1951) opposite David Farrar, The Captain's
Table (1959) starring John Gregson and Donald Sinden, Mr. Topaze (1961)
starring Peter Sellers, Maniac (1963) co-starring Kerwin Mathews, The Naked
Runner (1967) starring Frank Sinatra and a supporting role in the classic
Albert Finney/Audrey Hepburn romance Two for the Road (1967). Nadia is most
famous, however, for her cameo role toward the end of Federico Fellini's
masterpiece Dolce vita, La (1960) as a bored and wealthy socialite who
celebrates her divorce by performing a memorable mink-coated striptease
during a jaded party sequence in her home.
Following the death of her first husband in Spain in 1958 (he was only 52),
Nadia continued to film and settled permanently in America in the late 60s
after meeting and marrying second husband Herbert Silverman, a New York
lawyer. She retired from films completely in 1976 and began headlining as a
singing cabaret star. The trend-setting Russian-Romanian beauty died of a
stroke in Manhattan New York, New York, USA on June 13, 1994 at age 70 and
was survived by her second husband and two stepchildren.
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