Kerima (actress)

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Kerima (advertising photo 1952)

Kerima , born Miriam Charrière (born February 10, 1925 in Toulouse , France ) is a French film actress with a previous modeling career.

Live and act

Shortly after the end of the Second World War, Miriam Charrière had studied medicine for several semesters and did some modeling on the side. She was discovered by British director Carol Reed in 1950 when he was looking for a dark, exotic and enigmatic actress to play the central role of Aissa for his Joseph Conrad film adaptation, The Damned of the Islands, which was set in Indonesia . When he found her in Miriam Charrière, the producer Alexander Korda gave her the stage name Kerima, and the German news magazine Der Spiegel put her on the cover picture in its issue of January 24, 1951 as the first publication ever while filming (caption: “ Woman's atomic bomb ”). Further cover pictures in 1951/52 in Italian, French and British magazines were to follow.

With such sudden fame, Italian producers were mainly interested in the very southern looking, glowy-eyed young actress and gave her central roles in far fewer important productions than her film debut. Most of the time Kerima had passionate women of all kinds to play. A supporting role as Queen Nailla in the American monumental spectacle Land of the Pharaohs by Howard Hawks and another as the sister of the leading actress in the Graham Greene filming Four Pipes of Opium did not kick off a Hollywood career for Kerimas. In the early 1960s, the French largely stopped acting - two appearances in British productions in 1972 had little more than guest character - and in 1964 married the Bond film director Guy Hamilton . During the 1970s the couple moved to Mallorca , where Kerima still lives after Hamilton's death.

Filmography

  • 1951: The Outcast of the Islands (Outcast of the Islands)
  • 1953: The she-wolf of Calabria (La lupa)
  • 1953: Sicilian passion (Cavalleria rusticana)
  • 1953: The Ship of the Lost Women (La nave delle donne maledette)
  • 1954: bring you alive ...! (Tam tam mayumbe)
  • 1954: Io sono la primula rosa
  • 1955: Land of the Pharaohs
  • 1956: love under hot skies (Goubbiah, mon amour)
  • 1957: Four Pipes of Opium (The Quiet American)
  • 1958: uprising of the gladiators (La rivolta dei gladiatori)
  • 1959: Theater dreams (Il mondo dei miracoli)
  • 1959: The revenge of the Borgias (La notte del grande assalto)
  • 1961: Jessica (La Sage-femme, le Curé et le Bon Dieu)
  • 1972: The Love Box
  • 1972: Gene Bradley on a secret mission (TV series, episode: Love Always, Magda )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article “Reed seeks the sublime” in: Der Spiegel, Issue No. 4/1951

literature

  • International Motion Picture Almanac 1965, Quigley Publishing Company, New York 1964, p. 152
  • Ephraim Katz : The Film Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. Revised by Fred Klein and Ronald Dean Nolen. New York 2001, p. 744

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kerima
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Charrière, Miriam (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French film actress with a previous modeling career
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Toulouse , France