She was born Jarmila Anna Františka Marie Mandlová in a middle-class family in Mladá Boleslav.

The family struggled financially, so her mother was stealing food from their neighbour Václav Klement's garden.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s she made her best movies by her own account – Virginity, Kouzelný dům or Nocturnal Butterfly.

During the early 1940s and Second World War Mandlová dated German film director Willy Söhnel of Barrandov Studios.

After a false rumour that she also dated a Reichsprotektor Karl Hermann Frank, her public image suffered.

The next day Mandlová found out she would be known as Lil Adina, a name that Goebbels personally chose for her.

After the shooting was finished Frank sent a letter to Goebbels objecting that Mandlová should be cast in German films.

She got pregnant, but after Šmeral was transported to a concentration camp and she learned he planned to stay with his wife, she suffered a miscarriage.

[2] She was offered a role in Basil Dearden's movie Saraband for Dead Lovers, but a Communist Minister of Information Václav Kopecký refused to give her a passport.

She married a Czech flight engineer Josef Kočvárek who had British citizenship and moved to UK in 1947.

She married a wealthy Englishman named Geoffrey, but immediately regretted it and the marriage ended in divorce after two years.

She then worked in Radio Free Europe and later as a secretary of a fashion designer Ben Pearson, whom she married in 1954.