A marble bust of Sarah Bernhardt, by Jean-Leon Gerome, 1895, is photographed during the 'Sarah Bernhardt, And The Woman Created The Star' exhibition at the Petit Palais museum in Paris. Photo: AP
The pioneering French stage star Sarah Bernhardt was one of the world’s most famous women by the time of her death in 1923 - a status she owed not just to acting talent but her modern instinct for self-publicising and using the press to brand her image.
A century later, a French museum opened an exhibit on the eccentric, scandalous and multihyphenate performer known as "La Divine,” whom many consider the world’s first celebrity.
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