1.- Lya Lys, L’Age d’or, France, 1930. For his second surreralist (some said, pornographic) film – after Un Chien Andalou, 1929 – the Spanish icon-in-the-making Luis Bunuel had the choice of two actresses for Gaston Modot’s co-star. Some 52 years, Bunuel admitted in his autobiopgraphy that he couldn’t remember why he chose Lys over the daughter of the Russian writer, pilot, explorer and adventurer Aleksander Kuprin – hailed as Russia’s Kipling by Vladimir Nabokov. “As heroine Lya Lys sucks at the toes of a Greek statue in a moment of frustrated desperation, said BBC criticc Jamie Russell, “it’s clear that sex in this world is both terrifying and hilarious… It’s an exhilarating, irrational masterpiece of censor-baiting chutzpah.”
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 1