Danish-born actress and socialite Annette Stroyberg (aka Annette Vadim), best known for having married director Roger Vadim died of cancer on Dec. 12 in Copenhagen. She was 69.
Stroyberg made a few film appearances in the late 1950s and early 1960s, most notably as the innocent victim of connivers Jeanne Moreau and Gérard Philipe in Vadim's modernized version of Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses (1959). She was Vadim's second wife, following on the heels of Brigitte Bardot.
Among her other film roles — whether as Annette Vadim or Annette Stroyberg — are those in Blood and Roses (1960), as a vampire who makes out with Elsa Martinelli before gulping down her blood; Roberto Rossellini's Anima nera (1962), co-starring Vittorio Gassman as a man with a past; and Ivan Govar's action thriller Un soir… par hasard / Agent of Doom (1963).
In addition to Vadim, among Stroyberg's other off-screen husbands and/or lovers were Gassman, Sacha Distel, Omar Sharif, Warren Beatty, and Greek shipping magnate Gregory Callimanopulos.
With the assistance of journalist Henry-Jean Servat, she eventually published her book of memoirs, Les Liaisons scandaleuses.
As quoted in The Guardian, in his memoirs Vittorio Gassman described Stroyberg thus: "She had the reputation of a vamp, but, in reality, she was as fragile as a gazelle with a disarming melancholy expression. Annette was someone incapable of putting down roots, ceaselessly trying to allay her anxiety."