Mireille Balin

Balin was born near Monte Carlo. Her father, Charles Balin, was a French newspaper publisher. Her mother was Italian. Her education came at finishing schools. She was a policewoman in Paris until friends urged her to take a screen test.

Balin posed for some advertisements in Paris before she began acting in films. Considered one of the finest actresses of French cinema in the 1930s, she was discredited by her fraternization with the Nazis. During Nazi occupation of France, she became romantically involved with an officer of the Wehrmacht and at the end of war she was imprisoned in Fresnes until January 1945. She retired from film in 1947.

Balin arrived in Hollywood in 1937 with a staff of servants and with 28 trunks containing "most of her worldly possessions.

During the final 10 years of her life she lived in a "charitable home". Balin died in 1968, aged 59.