Biography

A striking brunette, she was said to resemble movie legend Rita Hayworth. Parisienne Myriam Bru studied drama at the private academy of Le Cours Simon under the tutelage of its founder René Simon. Later, whilst attending a Cannes Festival, she was spotted wearing a bikini by the roving eyes of producers Carlo Ponti and Dino De Laurentiis and promptly signed under contract with Rizzoli Films. Bru made her screen debut in 1952 and acted in several undistinguished productions until a plum role came her way in the supporting cast of Carmine Gallone's biopic Puccini (1953), starring Gabriele Ferzetti. After that, she was assigned the female lead in the melodrama Appassionatamente (1954) and co-starred in House of Ricordi (1954) (also directed by Gallone), the story of Italy's leading music publishers of the 19th century (for this film Ferzetti recreated his role as Pucchini, while Marcello Mastroianni portrayed Donizetti). In the meantime, Bru had become proficient in English and received offers from Paramount, which she spurned.

Very much at home in period settings, Bru essayed the titular heroine of The Lovers of Manon Lescout (1954), a Franco-Italian co-production based the 1731 novel 'Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux, et de Manon Lescaut' by Abbé Prévost. She then played the melancholic Denise Tissot opposite Vittorio De Sica in the episodic romance Holiday Island (1957). The following year, Bru went to Germany to star as the prostitute Katjuschka in Auferstehung (1958), adapted from Lev Tolstoy's final novel.

While filming, she became enamoured with her co-star, the German actor Horst Buchholz. They married in London in December 1958, while Buchholz was working on the movie Tiger Bay (1959). Under pressure from her new husband to forsake her career for family life, Bru acquiesced. The marriage endured until the death of Buchholz in 2003, though, by then, both partners lived separate lives.

Myriam Bru latterly managed a theatrical agency in Paris and has been credited with discovering and/or promoting such French stars as Hélène de Fougerolles, Mathilda May, Mélanie Thierry and Zoé Félix.
- IMDb mini biography by: I.S.Mowis