Macha Méril, born Princess Maria-Magdalena Vladimirovna Gagarin, was born on September 3, 1940 in Rabat, Morocco. The actress comes from the Ukrainian nobility and the Gagarin family, a princely house originating from the Briansk region in Russia. It was after the 1917 revolution that his parents decided to go into exile in France. Macha Méril will grow up surrounded by a half-brother, Georges, and her two sisters.
“It’s a chance to be an immigrant because it forced me to be better than the others, more than the others. This freedom (…) in reality, it’s a kind of vocation. It’s to not to be banal, that’s it, I think that among women there is this vocation to be the first of the rope”, she confided to Franceinfo. While the family settled near Antibes, her father died of typhus when she was only four years old.
“I may have invented this father, I may have magnified him, he was an aristocrat. You know, my family motto is ‘To be and not to appear’. That’s- to say we must always be an example, we must be impeccable and at the same time, it must not be seen“, she explained to our colleagues. When the patriarch died, the family finally moved to Paris. In the city of light, Macha Méril took literature courses before interrupting her studies to join the school of the National Popular Theatre. In 1959, the 19-year-old young woman began her film career with a supporting role in Gérard Oury’s film La Main Chaud. Begins for her, a long and beautiful career in the cinema.
On the strength of her first experience in the film The Hot Hand in 1959, Macha Méril was offered several other cinematographic projects such as Wednesday evening, 9 hours, Pepper sugared almonds in 1963 and finally A married woman in 1964. This feature film, directed by Jean-Luc Godard really allowed her to launch her acting career.
A life in the cinema which fell to her somewhat by chance, as she explained to the Payot.ch site in March 2020. “I was at the Sorbonne and so literature attracted me a lot, except that I I needed to earn a living very quickly. As I was pretty and a bebop champion, the filmmakers came to see me in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. I was carried away by this call of life. There are things who interested me more than being an actress“, she explained. However, it is as an actress that the star will distinguish herself. Whether on the boards or film sets, Macha Méril is unanimous with his fans.
The star has received many awards for this throughout his career. She was notably named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and received the National Order of Merit.
© AFP
The actress Macha Méril lived a beautiful and great love story with the composer Michel Legrand. More in love than ever, the lovebirds passed the ring on September 18, 2014. Unfortunately, on the night of January 25 to 26, 2019, the latter died of sepsis at the American hospital in Neuilly-sur- Seine.
In an interview with Franceinfo, the actress confided in her husband. “Basically, all my love stories have been attempts to get to Michel. It’s my only great love story”, she had told and added on the set of the show De quoi j’ mixes me on C8: “When he left, I felt invested with an additional force which was him. That is to say that I am two people in one now…”.
In her recent autobiography, actress Macha Méril spoke of her love affair with Luciano d’Alessandro for whom she had agreed to pose naked. Photos assumed as she had explained to our colleagues from Gala.
“I said to myself that it was not vulgar. I have always considered my body as badly screwed up, but in a harmonious way”, she had declared and to add: “In my time, I did not have corresponded to the canons of beauty that celebrated the slender lianas. I have forms. These nudes are not there for free, they come to tell of an encounter in Naples, at the beginning of the 80s, with a man who helped me when I I rethought my femininity”.
