Pola Negri was a Polish film actress who achieved notoriety as a femme fatale in silent films between 1910s and 1930s. Born Barbara Apolonia Chałupiec on January 3rd, 1897 in Lipno, Poland, as an only child in a poor family. Her mother had to make a living alone after Chałupiec's father was arrested by the Russians and sent to Siberia. Her father was a poor Slovak immigrant. In 1902, she moved with her mother to Warsaw, where they lived in extreme poverty. She trained as a dancer at the Ballet School in Warsaw and performed there until tuberculosis forced her to stop dancing.

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