Roger Vadim - Early Life

Early Life

Vadim was born as Roger Vladimir Plemiannikov in Paris. His Russian father, Igor Nikolaevich Plemiannikov (Russian: И́горь Никола́евич Племя́нников), had immigrated from Ukraine and became a naturalized French citizen, and was a vice consul of France to Egypt. His mother, Marie-Antoinette Ardilouze, was a French actress. Although Vadim lived in luxury in his early youth, the death of his father, in front of Vadim when he was nine, caused the family to return to France, where his mother found work running a hostel in the French Alps which served as a way-station for Jews and other fugitives fleeing Nazi Germany.

Vadim became a stage actor at the age of sixteen, after studying journalism and writing at the University of Paris, from which he did not graduate. In 1947, he became assistant to film director Marc Allégret, whom he met while working at the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt, and for whom he worked on several screenplays. Vadim then raised the funds to produce and direct his first film, And God Created Woman, starring Bardot, the profits from which made him wealthy. They went on to make two more films together, both of which featured Bardot as a sexpot.