- The daughter of a civil servant, Baarova trained for acting at the State Conservatory in Prague. She appeared on stage and acted in several Czech films before being signed by Ufa, where she was groomed as a star. Her first major role was in Barcarole (1935). She was romantically linked to the Third Reich's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. This liaison, for a while, did her career no harm. According to popular legend, Baarova's then-lover, the actor Gustav Fröhlich, slapped Goebbels in the face after catching the two in flagrant. Hitler, in order to salvage the marriage between Magda and Joseph Goebbels and to circumvent a scandal, effectively ordered Goeebels to give up his mistress. In 1938, Baarova was forbidden to make any further films in Germany. She returned forthwith to Prague. From 1942, she made several films in Mussolini's Italy. After the war, Baarova was accused as a collaborator and incarcerated for a year and a half in Pankrac prison. She was released a few days prior to Christmas 1946.
- She had an long term affair with Joseph Goebbels. She was persecuted by the communist regime because of "collaboration". According to he autobiography she later in her life regretted being mixed up in "the history". But at that time she was very young and "foolish" and couldn't help seeing Goebbels.
- Daughter of Ludmila Babková.
- Sister of Czech film star Zorka Janu.
- Refused a contract offer from MGM in 1937 and later regretted this decision.
- Was reputed to be a chain smoker.
- After her release from prison, Baarova married a theatrical agent, Jan Kopecky, who was related to the Czech Minister of the Interior. The pair made an abortive escape attempt across the border in 1948, but eventually did end up together in Argentina. After divorcing Kopecky in 1956, Baarova retired to Salzburg in Austria. Four years later, she began her theatrical comeback at the Theater an der Berliner Allee in Duesseldorf in a play by Claude Magnier..
- The couple - Fröhlich and Baarová - moved to Schwanenwerder island on the outskirts of Berlin, where their house was close to the residence of Joseph Goebbels, a leading member in the Nazi government of Hitler with a decisive voice in German film production and Nazi cinema. Baarová, still working for the UFA studios, met him when Goebbels visited Fröhlich's home in 1936. Gradually, they became closer and, under the urging of Goebbels, started a relationship that lasted over two years. Their love affair caused serious complications between Goebbels and his wife Magda. When the minister began to show up in public with his mistress, Magda Goebbels in turn began an affair with Goebbels' state secretary Karl Hanke and eventually asked Hitler for permission to divorce her husband. According to Baarová's own statements, she herself, fearing Goebbels' wounded pride, approached the dictator for help.
- Her last movies came in Spain into being, so "El batallon de las sombras" (1956), "Miedo" (1956) and "Rapsodia de sangre" (1958). After that she concentrated exclusively to the theater where she was working till the 70's.
- She turned them down under pressure from the Nazi authorities, but later regretted it and claimed to her biographer, Josef Skvorecky: "I could have been as famous as Marlene Dietrich.".
- In 1934, Baarová left Prague for Berlin after winning a contest at the UFA film studios for a role in the film Barcarole. She met Adolf Hitler that year and he told her, "You look like someone who played a major role in my life, a very significant role". Hitler was referring to his niece, Geli Raubal.
- In Austria in 1949, the actress attempted a comeback, but when the Austrian-British actor Anton Walbrook withdrew from a film where he was cast with her, she left for Argentina to escape the resulting negative media. Living in extreme poverty, she decided to return to Italy.
- She played several times at Gustav Fröhlich's side with whom she also was also engaged in private.
- After the attendance of the Prague action conservatory she got first engagements at the Nationaltheater.
- In 1935 she was engaged to Germany as an exotic vamp where she turned the German men's head with movies like "Barcarole" (1935), "Patrioten" (1937) and "Die Fledermaus" (1937).
- In the 1990s, Baarová re-appeared on the cultural scene of the Czech Republic.
- She was already spotted for the Czech movie at the age of 17.
- In Czechoslovakia in 1945, Baarová and her family were taken into custody on suspicion of collaboration with the Germans during the war. Her mother died under interrogation; her sister Zorka committed suicide in 1946. She herself was released after 18 months of custody due to lack of evidence.
- Her well-known affair with Reichspropaganda minister Joseph Goebbels attracted attention in the public. This relationship was stopped because of good of the German state and Lida Baarova returned to Czechoslovakia.
- In 2016, a dramatization of Baarová's life was set on film in The Devil's Mistress (Lída Baarová) by Filip Renc, with Tatiana Pauhofová starring as Baarová, Karl Marcovics as Goebbels, and David Novotny as UFA's head of production Ernst Hugo Correll.[.
- After Allied troops occupied Italy, she had to return to Prague. In April 1945, however, Lída Baarová left Prague for Germany again. On the way, she was taken into custody by the American military police, imprisoned in Munich, and later extradited to Czechoslovakia.
- A film, Lída Baarová's Bittersweet Memories, was released in 1995 and won an award at the 1996 Art Film Festival in Trencianske Teplice, Slovakia.
- Her ashes were interred in Prague's Strasnice Cemetery, where she rests with her parents and her sister Zorka.
- After the war she was taken into custody for 18 months in Prague because of collaboration before she could flee with her husband to Austria. She only took up her cinematically work in Italy from 1950.
- Her mother sang in a choir and appeared in several theatre plays.
- Baarová suffered from Parkinson's disease and died in 2000 in Salzburg, while living alone on the estate she inherited after the death of her second husband, Dr. Lundwall.
- Finally she went to Italy where she took part in the productions "Il cappello da prete" (43), "La sua strada" (1943), "La fornarina" (1944), "Carne inquieta" (1952) and "I vitelloni - Die Müssiggänger" (1953) in the next ten years.
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