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Her father was a Swiss poet-playwright, her mother, an Austrian actress. At age 16 she debuted onscreen in a Swiss production. She played intense, soulful leads in films of a number of nations. For her work in Helmut Kautner's Die letzte Brucke/The Last Bridge (1954) she won the Cannes Film Festival Best Actress award; she won the Venice Festival Best Actress Award for Rene Clement's Gervaise. She tended to play weepy, suffering women, a type that was much less popular with audiences in the '60s; her career went into decline and she retired in 1963. In 1968 she returned to films in occasional character roles. She is the sister of actor Maximilian Schell.