Pola Negri - Early Life

Early Life

Negri was born Apolonia Chałupec (or Barbara Apollonia Chalupec) in Lipno, Vistula Land, Russian Empire (present-day Poland). She was the youngest of three children, but because the first two died young, she grew up as an only child. Her mother, whose maiden name was Eleonora Kiełczewska, was reportedly impoverished Polish royalty, and her father, Jerzy Chalupec, was a Slovak immigrant tinsmith. After Chałupiec's father was arrested by the Russian authorities for revolutionary activities and sent to Siberia, she and her mother moved to Warsaw, where they lived in extreme poverty.

Chałupiec was accepted into the Imperial Ballet of Warsaw, and began training in the ballet academy. The Academy’s patron and ballet enthusiast was Tsar Nicholas II. The Academy produced such world famous ballerinas as Pawlowa, Tamara Karsawina, and Matilda Krzesinska. Chałupiec's first dance performance was in the chorus of baby swans in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, and she worked her way up to a solo role in the Saint-Léon ballet Coppélia. A bout of tuberculosis forced her to stop dancing. Chałupiec was sent to a sanatorium to recover, and during that time, she adopted the pseudonym Pola Negri, after the Italian novelist and poetess Ada Negri, with Pola being short for Apolonia.