Roger Vadim

Roger Vadim Plemiannikov (; 26 January 1928 – 11 February 2000) was a French screenwriter, film director and producer, as well as an author, artist and occasional actor. His best-known works are visually lavish films with erotic qualities, such as And God Created Woman (1956), Blood and Roses (1960), Barbarella (1968), and Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971). Early life Vadim was born Roger Vadim Plemiannikov (sometimes transliterated Plemiannikoff) in Paris. His father, Igor Nikolaevich Plemiannikov, a White Russian military officer and pianist, had emigrated from the Russian Empire and become a naturalized French citizen. He was a vice consul of France to Egypt, stationed in Alexandria, later posting to Mersin, Turkey as a consul. Vadim's mother, Marie-Antoinette (née Ardilouze), was a French actress. Although Vadim lived as a diplomat's child in Northern Africa and the Middle East in his early youth, the death of his father when Vadim was nine years old caused the family to return to France, where his mother found work running a hostel in the French Alps, which was functioning as a way-station for Jews and other fugitives fleeing Nazism. Vadim studied journalism and writing at the University of Paris, without graduating. Film career