Renée Adorée

German-born French actress in Hollywood silent movies during the 1920s, most famous for her role as Melisande in the 1925 melodramatic romance and war epic The Big Parade.

Adorée was the daughter of circus artists and performed regularly with her parents as a child. In her teens, she began acting in minor stage productions and toured Europe with her troupe. She was performing in Russia when World War I broke out and fled to London. Having made a reputation for her dancing skills in France, England and Australia (where she appeared in the film £500 Reward in 1918), she went to New York City very early in 1919, where she was cast in vaudeville-style musicals before breaking into Hollywood.

She appeared with John Gilbert in The Big Parade, one of MGM's all-time biggest hits, and a film that historians rank as one of the best of the silent film era. In The Mating Call, a 1928 film produced by Howard Hughes, Adorée had a very brief swimming scene in the nude that caused a significant commotion at the time.

By the end of 1930, Adorée had appeared in 45 films, the last four of which were sound pictures. That year, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She died on 5 October 1933, aged 36, at the Sunland health resort in Tujunga, California.