Miroslava Stern

About Miroslava Stern

Born in interwar Prague as Miroslava Stanclová, her father died and she was adopted by a Jewish doctor, the psychoanalyst Dr. Oskar Leo Stern (1900-1972) who married her mother, Miroslava (née Becka; 1898-1945). Dr. and Mrs. Stern had a son, Ivo (1931-2011), the actress's half-brother. The family was, at one point, interned in a concentration camp after they fled their native Czechoslovakia in 1939. They sought refuge in various Scandinavian countries before emigrating to Mexico in 1941.

After winning a beauty contest in Mexico City, young Miroslava spent some time in Los Angeles studying acting. Due to her European features and accent, she rarely found roles other than mysterious women or foreign beauties. She was eventually offered a role in what would become her last and most remembered film: Luis Buñuel's The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955).

Soon after the film wrapped, she committed suicide reportedly because the man she loved married another woman. In a macabre coincidence, the premiere of The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955), in which a mannequin in her likeness is incinerated, was released during her own cremation in a Mexican graveyard. Her short, tragic life inspired a short story in 1990, and a film, Miroslava (1993).