The life and work of Sunnyi Melles is characterized by encounters with great contemporary historical personalities. Among them was the great theater maker George Tabori, who had already worked with her grandmother and was also friends with her mother Judith Rohonczy. “Once upon a time, that doesn’t exist,” the author and director, who died in 2007, said to her. It should be called “Once upon a time.” “The emigrants in my mother’s circle of acquaintances, and she herself, taught me to endure everything with humor,” says Melles. And so she sees her own acting skills as something that can never be viewed in isolation from the events of the day. “When I was in… Cannes, the Russians attacked Ukraine,” she says. “During our filming of ‘The Doubts’, the Hamas terrorist attack happened on my birthday.” This means that some scenes in the series about a Jewish-German family in Frankfurt are in slipped into a completely different context than what was possibly intended in the script.
Inspiration from George Tabori, praise from Brad Pitt
Melles is currently experiencing international attention and acclaim. At the gala for the French film awards “Césars” in Paris, even Brad Pitt stopped and congratulated her: her acting performance in Ruben Östlund’s film “Triangle Of Sadness” was so impressive that he watched the film twice in a row have.
The acting career of the Luxembourgish-Swiss actress with Jewish-Hungarian roots has spanned many decades. She appeared on stage for the first time at the age of 10, and at the age of 14 she filmed “Steppenwolf” with global star Max von Sydow. For a long time she was considered a stage star, especially in her congenial collaboration with the Munich artistic director Dieter Dorn.
Private photos and legendary recordings of the “Mamarazza”
She opened her private album for the star with photos of her mother-in-law Marianne Fürstin zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn (104), who caused a sensation as a photographer under the name “Mamarazza”. These also include pictures of prominent personalities such as Tabori, Karl Lagerfeld, Prince Charles and Maria Callas. Of all places, Melles’s filming location for “Triangle Of Sadness” was on the famous yacht belonging to the Onassis family, on which the princess saw the opera diva in the 1960s. The different stages of this life and this extraordinary career also reflect contemporary history and socio-political aspects from the different decades.