Dora Doll, the daughter of a Russian-Jewish banker who was expelled after the 1917 Revolution, was born in Berlin in 1922. She came to France at the end of the 1930s and aspired to become an actress. She already spoke Russian and German and soon learned French, then Italian and English. One of her first screen appearances was as Juliette in Henri-Georges Clouzot's Manon (1949). She appeared as Lola in Jacques Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi (1954) and as Genisse in Jean Renoir's French Cancan (1955). In 1976, she appeared on television in the French series Hôtel Baltimore in the role of Suzy. In 1977, she appeared in Fred Zinnemann's Julia as the woman passenger accompanying Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda) when Lily smuggled $50,000 through Nazi Germany for her friend Julia (Vanessa Redgrave). In 1982, she played in Ettore Scola's That Nig...