Sanda was born on 11 March 1951[1] in Paris, to Lucienne (née Pichon) and Gérard Varaigne.

[2] She appeared in such noted European films of the 1970s as Vittorio de Sica's Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist and Novecento, and Liliana Cavani's Beyond Good and Evil.

Bernardo Bertolucci originally intended to cast Sanda in Last Tango in Paris; she developed the idea with him.

From 1995 to 1996 in France and Belgium, she has been Lady Chiltern in An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde, directed by Adrian Brine.

In 2000, she married Nicolae Cutzarida, an Argentine philosopher and university professor of Romanian origin.