Christiane Susanne Harlan was born in
Braunschweig,
Lower Saxony,
Germany, in 1932, the daughter of two opera singers, Ingeborg (
née de Freitas) and Fritz Moritz Harlan. She was trained as an actress, but became better known as a painter. Success in her early career as an actress led to her being cast in the film
Paths of Glory by
Stanley Kubrick, being credited as Susanne Christian. In the final scene of
Paths of Glory, the young woman she plays is forced to sing to a tavern full of rowdy and disillusioned French soldiers. Her rendition in German of the German folk song
Ein treuer Husar (
The Faithful Hussar) slowly wins the hearts of the crowd of men, who stop their mocking and carousing, and, one by one, begin to hum and sing along, many of them in tears. Although the project was never realized, Stanley Kubrick had considered making a film about their uncle,
Veit Harlan, the German filmmaker who made the antisemitic
Jud Süß (1940). The two siblings are very active in preservation, exhibit production, and publishing related to Stanley Kubrick's life and work, including the
Taschen mega-book
The Stanley Kubrick Archives and the touring major museum exhibit. As of 2018, Kubrick continues to live in
England, where she and her daughter, Katharina, hold regular painting courses at their home,
Childwickbury Manor, in
Hertfordshire. ==Filmography==