She also lost her oldest sister, Zosia, to typhus. As Radioactive depicts, she lost her mother to tuberculosis at 1o years old.

Sklodowska was born as the youngest of four sisters into a modest family. Print Collector // Getty Images Curie was born Marya Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland, in 1867. Marya Sklodovska (Marie Curie) with her sister Bronya, seated, in 1886. And from her tragedy-struck childhood in Poland to her much-maligned affair, it's pretty much all true. It touches on the Curies' dabblings in the occult, and a tabloid scandal that threatened Marie's professional career. It's this single-mindedness, the film seems to argue, that allows her to see and pursue what others didn't-and lead her and her husband to change the course of modern history.īased roughly on Radioactive: A Tale of Love and Fallout, the biographical graphic novel by Lauren Redniss, the movie charts Curie's rise and legendary partnership with her husband, Pierre-all whilst flashing forward to the events that would shape the legacy of their research: Hiroshima, Nevada's Doom Towns, the development of radiation therapy. The Marie Curie in Radioactive, played by Rosamund Pike, is razor-sharp, candid, and intolerant of nonsense in all its forms. 'She wants to do her job.'Īnd she does it well.

I love this woman who really does not care, because she does not have the time to care about what people may think about her,' explains Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis author and director of the newly-released Marie Curie biopic, Radioactive. I loved this woman who is uncompromising.

Radioactive by lauren redniss