Berthe Cerny (31 January 1868 â€" 27 March 1940) was a French actress,
known as an elegant blonde beauty. She had a brilliant career,
interpreting both classical and contemporary roles. She had several
affairs, including with the politicians Aristide Briand and Paul
Reynaud, and had two illegitimate sons by other lovers. She joined the
Comédie-Française in 1906 and became a sociétaire in 1909.Hélène
Lucie De Choudens was born on 31 January 1868 in Paris. At a very
young age she was a student of Gustave Worms at the Conservatoire de
Paris. She graduated in 1885 with a first prize in acting. In 1886 she
had a child, Jacques Robert de Choudens (1887â€"1915), by an unknown
father. She played under the stage name Berthe Cerny at the Théâtre
de l'Odéon, then the Théâtre du Vaudeville, then other venues, and
for twenty years pursued a brilliant career on the boulevards. She
played notable roles in plays by Paul Hervieu, Marcel Prévost and
Georges de Porto-Riche.Les Annales du Théâtre et de la Musique for
1893 reported three plays that featured Berthe Cerny. In January she
appeared at the Théâtre du Gymnase Marie Bell in Je dîne chez ma
mère by Adrien Decourcelle. The critic wrote, "Mlle. Berthe Cerny,
who had just had a great success in Brussels, had taken over Sophie
Arnould's role with infinite charm and grace." In April she appeared
again at the Théâtre du Gymnase Marie Bell as Maman Clémentine in
the Homme à l'oreille cassée by Pierre Decourcelle and Antony Mars,
after the novel by Edmond About. She appeared at the Théâtre du
Palais-Royal in November as Etiennette in the romantic comedy Leurs
Gigolettes by Henri Meilhac and Albert de Saint-Albin. The critic
said, "Berthe Cerny is fine and perverse; she shows us, moreover, with
laudable disinterest, two exquisitely molded legs in pretty stockings
of black silk."In 1895 Alexandre Dumas, fils repeated the stale idea
that actresses must be immoral, saying the "feverish work, the quest
for feigned emotions, the thirst for applause, the joys of triumph ...
raise their bodies to a temperature they must maintain in real life."
Berthe Cerny was among those who contradicted him in the pages of Le
Temps, saying that a well-behaved but talented actress could easily
portray vice. Berthe Cerny Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter