Sarah Bernhart

Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt; 1880
Born	Henriette Rosine Bernard 22/23 October 1844 Paris, France
Died	26 March 1923(1923-03-26) (aged 78) Paris, France
Cause of death	Uremia
Nationality	French
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1862–1922
Spouse(s)	Ambroise Aristide Damala (m. 1882–1889)
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Sarah Bernhardt (French: [saʁa bɛʁnɑʁt]; 22 or 23 October 1844 – 26 March 1923) was a French stage actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including La Dame Aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas, fils, Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo, Fédora and La Tosca by Victorien Sardou, and L'Aiglon by Edmond Rostand. She also played male roles, including Shakespeare's Hamlet. Rostand called her "the queen of the pose and the princess of the gesture", while Hugo praised her "golden voice". She made several theatrical tours around the world, and was one of the first prominent actresses to make sound recordings and to act in motion pictures.

Sarah Bernhardt was born Henriette-Rosine Bernard at 5 rue de L'École-de-Médicine in the Latin Quarter of Paris on 22 or 23 October 1844. She was the illegitimate daughter of Judith Bernard (also known as Julie and in France as Youle), a Dutch Jewish courtesan, a prostitute with a wealthy or upper-class clientele. The name of her father is not recorded. According to some sources, he was probably the son of a wealthy merchant from Le Havre. Bernhardt later wrote that her father's family paid for her education, insisted she be baptized as a Catholic, and left a large sum to be paid when she came of age. Her mother traveled frequently, and saw little of her daughter. She placed the child with a nurse in Brittany, then in a cottage in the Paris suburb of Neuilly,

When Sarah was seven, her mother sent her to a boarding school for young ladies in the Paris suburb of Auteuil, paid with funds from her father's family. There, she acted in her first theatrical performance in the play Clothilde, where she had the role of the Queen of the Fairies, and performed her first of many dramatic death scenes.