Anny Ondra (born Anna Sophie Ondráková; 15 May 1903 – 28 February 1987) was a Czech film actress. She began her career in 1920 and appeared in Czech, German, Austrian, French and English films. In 1933, she married German boxing champion Max Schmeling. Life Ondra was born in Tarnów to Czech parents, Bohumír Ondrák, an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army, and Anna Ondráková (née Mracek). She had two brothers, Tomáš and Jindřich. She spent her childhood in Tarnów, Pula and Prague. At seventeen she acted in the theatre and in her first film, which was directed by her then boyfriend, director and actor Karel Lamač. When her family learned of it, they had a shouting match in which the teenager received a beating from her father - to be an actress, soon after the First World War, was socially almost at the level of being a beggar. Anna had been educated at a convent school and her father had found an official government position for her. Anna preferred a film career and began to live with Karel Lamač. "I swim like a fish, ride like a cowboy, and I would do it all if the film required it," summarised the nineteen-year-old. After some years she wanted to start a family, but Lamač did not want to marry. So, after a three-year romance, on 6 July 1933 in Bad Saarow, Ondra married German boxer Max Schmeling. Schmeling had acquired the summer house in Bad Saarow belonging to the expressionist painter Bruno Krauskopf, who had fled exile from the Nazis, in 1933. Ondra and Schmeling appeared together in the film Knock-out (1935). Throughout their marriage, the Nazi regime tried to exploit the fame and popularity of Ondra and Schmeling. They were often seen in photos with Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler - Schmeling portrayed as a German superman (he was heavyweight champion of the world between 1930 and 1932) and Ondra as a blonde Aryan, despite her Slavic origins. However, they never collaborated: Schmeling refused to accept honours from the German state and even secretly helped to hide two Jewish children, saving their lives; in Nazi Germany this was a capital offence. After the war, they were penalised financially for collaboration, and an arrest warrant was issued in Czechoslovakia. Nazi propaganda was taken literally and Schmeling never visited Ondra's homeland. After the war, they were left without funds and assets. In 1949