She was born into a theatrical family, and was the wife of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick from 1958 until his death in 1999. Christiane Susanne Harlan was born in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony in 1932, the daughter of two opera singers, Fritz Moritz Harlan and his wife Ingeborg (née de Freitas).
She and Kubrick married in 1958, shortly after filming was completed.
She was trained as an actress but became better known as an artist. Success in her earlier career as an actress led to her being cast in the film Paths of Glory by Stanley Kubrick, credited as Susanne Christian. In the final scene of Paths of Glory, the young woman she plays is forced to sing to a rowdy, disillusioned tavern-full of French soldiers.
Her rendition in German of the German folk song Ein treuer Husar (The Faithful Hussar) slowly wins the hearts of the crowd of men who stop their mocking and carousing, and, one by one, begin to hum and sing along, many of them in tears.
Their marriage lasted until Kubrick"s death in 1999. They had two daughters, Anya and Vivian.
Anya died in 2009 from cancer, aged 50. The Kubrick family moved to England in the early 1960s, where Christiane continued to paint and exhibit.
Nearly thirty years later, in Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Christiane"s vivid paintings adorn nearly every wall of Doctor and Mistress
Harford"s (Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman) New York city apartment. Her paintings are also featured in various rooms of Ziegler"s (Sydney Pollack) New York City mansion (in the billiard room and the upstairs bathroom). Her brother January Harlan was executive producer for all of Stanley Kubrick"s films from Barry Lyndon (1975) onwards, as well as, following Kubrick"s death, director of the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, in which she took full part.
The two siblings are very active in preservation, exhibit production and publishing related to Stanley Kubrick"s life and work, including the Taschen mega-book The Stanley Kubrick Archives and the touring major museum exhibit.
In March 2001, Kubrick traveled to the Vatican in Rome to screen a newly remastered version of her late husband"s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The film was shown at the Vatican on the evening of Thursday 1 March under the aegis of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.
In 1996, that Council listed the Kubrick film among the most important films of the 20th century. The 2001 Vatican screening was also attended by Archbishop John Foley who was then the president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.
