Maria Casarès

Daughter of the Prime Minister of the Spanish Republic Santiago Casares Quiroga, Maria fled to Paris in 1936. Graduating from the Paris Conservatoire with first prize in tragedy in 1942, she met Albert Camus on the eve of the Normandy landings in 1944, beginning an immortal fifteen-year love correspondence.

Casarès was celebrated as one of the greatest classical stage tragediennes of the century with Jean Vilar's TNP and the Comédie-Française, playing Lady Macbeth, Phèdre, and Medea. In cinema, her portrayal of the dark Princess of Death in Jean Cocteau's Orphée (1950) remains an indelible visual archetype of world cinema.