Biographie
Born Nadia Kujnir-Herescu in Bucharest, Romania, on November 23, 1923, to a Russian father and a Bessarabian mother, Nadia Gray grew up in her hometown. She met her first husband, Constantin Cantacuzino (1905-1958), a Romanian aviator and celebrated WWII fighter ace, while traveling as a passenger on one of his commercial flights. The couple fled Romania during the Communist takeover in the late 1940s and relocated to Paris. There, Nadia built an extensive international career, starring as a leading and supporting actress on stage and in films. They eventually settled in Spain.
Her film debut came with a leading role as a young waitress aspiring to be a star in the French-Austrian co-production L'inconnu d'un soir (1949). She went on to portray numerous mature, sophisticated, and glamorous aristocratic characters in European cinema, often embodying continental jet setters or members of the bourgeoisie. Early roles that propelled her to European fame included her portrayal of a countess in Monseigneur (1949), a woman enamored with a thief in The Spider and the Fly (1949), and Cristina Versini in the Italian Technicolor biopic Puccini (1953). Her European male co-stars included legendary figures such as Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio de Sica, Rossano Brazzi, Errol Flynn, Maurice Ronet, and Gabriele Ferzetti.
Her appearances in English-language films spanned various genres including adventure, drama, comedy, and horror. Notable titles include Valley of the Eagles (1951) with John McCallum and Jack Warner, Night Without Stars (1951) opposite David Farrar, The Captain's Table (1959) featuring John Gregson and Donald Sinden, I Like Money (1961) starring Peter Sellers, Maniac (1963) alongside Kerwin Mathews, The Naked Runner (1967) with Frank Sinatra, and a supporting role in the acclaimed Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn romance Two for the Road (1967). Nadia is best remembered for her cameo near the end of Federico Fellini's masterpiece La Dolce Vita (1960), where she played a bored, wealthy socialite who celebrates her divorce by performing a memorable mink-coated striptease during a jaded party at her home.
After the death of her first husband in Spain in 1958 at age 52, Nadia continued acting and eventually settled permanently in the United States in the late 1960s following her marriage to Herbert Silverman, a New York lawyer. She retired from film entirely in 1976 and transitioned to a career as a cabaret singer. The striking Russian-Romanian beauty passed away from a stroke in Manhattan on June 13, 1994, at the age of 70, survived by her second husband and two stepchildren.
