Ah, mes chers amis, how strange it is to gaze upon my life, where the curtains of time part to show each moment of my life like those on a grand stage, revealing every act, every soliloquy, every bow.

I Am Sarah Bernhardt, now a whisper in the winds of history, look back with a mix of triumph and tender ache. Death, my final encore, came to me in 1923, but my spirit freshly lingers, unbound by the grave, much like the roles I inhabited. I wish to recount my journey, not as history’s dry chronicle, but as the passionate drama it was, as told from my own lips, so, if you will kindly indulge this diva one last performance.

My beginnings were shrouded in shadow and scandal, born Henriette-Rosine Bernard in Paris on an obscure October day in 1844. My mother, Judith, or Youle, as I called her, was a Dutch Jewish courtesan, elegant and ambitious, a social climber flitting among the elite like a moth to gilded flames. But my father was a complete mystery, never revealed to me, perhaps an attorney from Le Havre, whose family secretly and grudgingly funded my early years but never claimed me fully. I was born illegitimate, a child of rumours and whispers, left and cared for by nurses in Brittany and Neuilly while my Mother eagerly pursued further patrons, men like the Duke de Morny, Napoleon III’s half-brother, who became my unwitting guardian angel. Those early days were lonely; I recall the cold boarding school in Auteuil at seven, where I first tasted the thrill of performance, chosen to play the Queen of the Fairies in Clothilde. Oh, how I revelled in that overly dramatic death scene! But poverty nipped at our heels, and Mother’s frequent absences left me yearning for affection, a void that no doubt fuelled my later appetite for applause.

Influences came not from tender parental guidance, Mother was often distant, more mentor in survival than in love, but from the world’s serendipity. At the Grandchamp convent near Versailles, sponsored by Morny, I embraced Catholicism fervently, receiving my first communion in 1856, yet I never shed my Jewish roots. “I am a Roman Catholic by choice but remain a member of the great Jewish race,” I once declared, waiting for Christians to improve.

I did perform once as the Archangel Raphael, stirring up accusations of sacrilege, when I choose to bury my pet lizard with full Christian rites. My ambitions ignited then: not for piety, but for the stage’s transcendence. Morny, seeing my blazing desire to perform rather than to serve, urged me toward acting despite my initial terror. He arranged my first theatre visit to Britannicus and Amphitryon at the Comédie-Française, where tears streamed down my face, and Alexandre Dumas himself noticed me, naming me as “my little star” and began coaching me for the Conservatoire audition.

With vivid exaggeration, I recited La Fontaine’s The Two Pigeons, winning entry at only fifteen. My dear mentors, Joseph-Isidore Samson and Jean-Baptiste Provost, taught me the art of grand gestures and simplicity, shaping the actress I would become. Mother continued  guiding by example, her resilience in a man’s world taught me to seize opportunity, though her world of continuous courtesans whispered warnings of fragility.

My early career was a tempest of trials and triumphs. Entering the Conservatoire in 1860, I dropped my given name of “Henriette-Rosine” for “Sarah Bernhardt,” a name that rolled like poetry.

My debut at the Comédie-Française in 1862 as Iphigénie was almost ended before it began. I was overcome with stage fright which caused me to rush my lines, and my slender frame was mocked by critics. Francisque Sarcey noted my precision but thought little else. Conflicts erupted: I slapped a fellow actress, flared up at a doorkeeper, and ended up fleeing in 1864.

I returned later, of course, determined to overcome my initial fears and discrepancies – firstly to the Gymnase and then the Odéon from 1866, under Felix Duquesnel, I studied and honed my craft. My breakthrough came in Le Passant as the boy troubadour Zanetto, in which I gave 150 performances. My recognition was rewarded with the arrival of a diamond brooch from Napoleon III himself! During the Franco-Prussian War, I transformed the Odéon into a hospital, nursing the wounded using the wooden staging as various props as fuel for heating. Ah, those days at the Odéon: “It was the theatre that I loved the most, and that I only left with regret. We all loved each other. Everyone was happy and gay. The theatre was like a continuation of school.”

And then, the new technology of media beckoned, those marvellous inventions that could amplify my voice across vast oceans. Photography first, I posed endlessly, crafting my image with many daring viewpoints, from ethereal portraits to scandalous scenes taken in my recently acquired coffin, which I kept for studying death roles. It was publicity, pure and potent, turning my eccentricity into legend.

In 1880, during my American tour, I met Thomas Edison and recorded a snippet of Phèdre on his phonograph—a fleeting echo, but revolutionary at the time. Being captured on film followed: Le Duel d’Hamlet in 1900 at the Paris Exposition, with synchronized sound, though early days and quite primitive. I starred in Camille (1911), The Loves of Queen Elizabeth (1912) which was hand-tinted in colour, a financial triumph that helped birth the success of Paramount Pictures.

Tragedy struck in 1915 in which I acquired gangrene resulting in amputation of my leg. Despite this, i continued, filming Mères Françaises (1917) as wartime propaganda. I saw myself as a pioneer, bridging theatre and the advancement of these mechanical wonders.

“Without doubt, Sarah Bernhardt only knew the cinema in its most primitive form,” some would later say, but I whole heartedly embraced it, accelerating the use of exagerrated gestures for the silent screen. There is a story that claimed I fainted seeing myself in La Dame aux Camélias, feeling the mutilation of my voice, but absolutely not true. I adapted my methods allow for my art to evolve. These modern technologies became my canvas. I helped forge them into tools of fame, planting “the French verb in the heart of a foreign literature,” as I proudly stated.

Fame descended like a whirlwind, and oh, how I danced in its eye! Crowds mobbed my tours, receiving $194,000 in gold from America alone. Newspapers devoured my every move: my weight, my pets (lions, alligators, even a champagne-sipping one), my hobbies. I was the first film star ‘celebrity’ and my audience simply couldn’t get enough.

When they speculated on my hair colour, I quipped, “I regret that I cannot prove that I am a natural blonde.” I sued for libel, demanded corrections to their written narratives and false statements, learning to master the media as they sought to master me.

The attention and devotion I received was both intoxicating and overwhelming; scandals swirled around the papers, from portraying sympathetic prostitutes to my Jewish advocacy amid pogroms and the Dreyfus Affair.
It changed me, yes, my ego swelled with all the focus placed upon me. At this point, the celebrity status I received wherever I went shaped the ‘diva’ image I displayed to the public. Critics like George Bernard Shaw calling my acting “childishly egotistical.”

From an illegitimate waif, I had ascended society’s ladder: mansions, servants, my own Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt. My personality sharpened. I became more resilient, adventurous. “I passionately love this life of adventures,” I wrote. “I detest knowing in advance what they are going to serve at my dinner… I adore the unexpected.”

Yet fame hardened my attitude; I became fiercely independent, playing male roles like Hamlet with “sexless grace,” defying norms. It fuelled my feminism, inspiring women worldwide, but isolated me in a blaze of my own self-creation. The highlights of my life shine like jewels within my Diva’s Crown: Over 1,000 performances as Camille in La Dame aux Camélias, Victor Hugo’s tear-shaped pearl after Hernani, my cross-dressing ‘Hamlet’ challenging gender normalities, managing my own theatre from 1899. Wartime patriotism, reciting verses in trenches, declaring “Weep, Germany!” post-amputation, carried in a gilded palanquin.

My sculptures, my memoirs Ma Double Vie (1907), my acting treatise L’Art du Théâtre (1923) – “The art of our art is not to have it noticed… create an atmosphere by our sincerity.”

Looking back now, there are a few regrets but more poignant views.

My son Maurice, born in 1864 to Prince de Ligne, my “abiding wound,” a joy shadowed by illegitimacy and his later gambling debts that forced me to pawn my jewels rather than discredit his name.

My marriage to Jacques Damala in 1882, a Greek cad whose morphine addiction and numerous infidelities broke my heart; I signed as his widow, but what folly! And perhaps, not reconciling fully with my dual faith, or the family rifts from Dreyfus. In love, I was tempestuous having illicit affairs with Mounet-Sully, Lou Tellegen, but I would say they enriched my life more than being considered as unruly.

From this viewpoint in the afterlife, I feel privileged to still view my achievements with luminous pride. I was the godmother of the modern famed celebrity, inventing the playbook: courting controversy, leveraging media, turning persona into power.

Before your modern day gods and goddesses parading as film and media icons, there was I, the original global icon, resilient film trailblazer. My legacy endures beyond my lifetime with theaters named after me, films that now bring together sound and colour, women empowered across all industries.

If I could whisper to the living, I would say : “Embrace the unexpected, for life is the grandest stage. Adieu, until the next curtain call.”

From the vantage of eternity, where the applause has faded into a gentle echo and the spotlights dim to starlight, I, Sarah Bernhardt, offer you these ten principles distilled from the whirlwind of my existence. They are not mere platitudes but truths forged in the fire of ambition, scandal, triumph, loss, and unyielding will. I lived by them—sometimes imperfectly, often extravagantly—and they carried me through poverty, war, amputation, and the intoxicating blaze of fame.

  1. Embrace the unexpected, for life is a drama best improvised. I detested routine; the predictable bored me to tears. Adventure, surprise, the unforeseen twist—these fuelled my spirit. Seek the unknown, and let it reshape you.
  2. Quand même—persist against all odds. This was my motto, etched on everything I owned. Obstacles? Scandals? A lost leg? They are mere scenery changes. Push forward, no matter what. Nothing can truly stop a determined soul.
  3. Spend yourself generously; energy creates energy. Life begets life. By pouring out passion, effort, and love, one becomes richer. Hoard nothing—give fully to your art, your loves, your causes. Exhaustion is temporary; stagnation is death.
  4. Craft your persona boldly; fame is a role you write yourself. I posed in coffins, tamed lions, courted controversy, and turned eccentricity into legend. In an age of emerging media, I seized the narrative. Shape your image fearlessly—let the world see the version of you that commands attention.
  5. Live for the few who truly understand you. The masses applaud, but true judgment comes from a handful who know your heart. Live for them, forgive their flaws as they forgive yours. The rest? Their opinions are noise.
  6. Art demands sincerity above all. On stage or screen, the greatest technique is to feel deeply and let it show without artifice. “The art of our art is not to have it noticed.” Live authentically; pretence withers the soul.
  7. Defy convention and claim your space. I played Hamlet as a woman, championed Dreyfus when it cost me dearly, loved whom I chose. Society’s rules are chains—break them when they bind your truth. Freedom lies in bold self-possession.
  8. Turn adversity into fuel. Illegitimacy, poverty, rejection, illness—I transformed each wound into strength. War made me a nurse; amputation made me perform from a chair. Pain is raw material; use it to build something greater.
  9. Cherish independence above dependence. I managed my own theatre, toured the world alone, refused to be anyone’s shadow. Rely on yourself first; others may enrich, but never define you. True power is self-sustained.
  10. Love passionately, even when it wounds. Affairs, marriage, motherhood—they brought ecstasy and heartbreak. I regretted little, for love’s fire illuminated my life. Give your heart fully, but never lose yourself in another. The stage of the heart is as demanding as any theatre.

These are the lessons I carry into the beyond, where I watch new generations perform their own grand dramas. Take them, adapt them, live them fiercely. The curtain never truly falls—only rises again on a different act.