Miroslava Stern

Miroslava Stern, born in interwar Prague as Miroslava Stanclová, was the adopted daughter of a Jewish psychoanalyst, Dr. Oskar Leo Stern. She fled Czechoslovakia with her family in 1939, was interned in a concentration camp, and eventually settled in Mexico in 1941. After winning a beauty contest in Mexico City, she studied acting in Los Angeles, but her European features and accent often limited her to roles as mysterious women or foreign beauties. Her most remembered role came in Luis Buñuel's The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955).

Sadly, her life was cut short when she committed suicide at age 29, reportedly because the man she loved married another woman. In a macabre coincidence, the film's premiere, which features a mannequin in her likeness being incinerated, took place during her cremation. Her tragic story inspired a short story in 1990 and a film, Miroslava, in 1993.