Born Nadia Kujnir into a Jewish family in Bucharest. Her father moved to Romania from Russia, her mother was from Akkerman (Bessarabia). She left Romania for Paris in the late 1940s to escape the Communist takeover after World War II. Her film debut was in L'Inconnu d'un soir in 1949. Perhaps her best-known role was in the Federico Fellini film La Dolce Vita (1960).
She was first married to N. Goldenberg (later Herescu), a wealthy businessman from Chișinău, then to Constantin Cantacuzino, a Romanian aristocrat who was one of Romania's top fighter aces of the war. They were married from 1946 to his death in 1958. Her third husband was Manhattan attorney Herbert Silverman. They were married from 1967 to her death in 1994. She died in New York City.
She played a guest role in an episode of the television series The Prisoner ("The Chimes of Big Ben", 1967).
