Top 200 French Actresses
[D] The list also includes Belgian and French-Swiss actresses
Page 1 (1900s-1970s), Page 2 (1970s-2020s).
Page 1 (1900s-1970s), Page 2 (1970s-2020s).
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- Bleuette Bernon was born on 6 June 1878 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for The Kingdom of the Fairies (1903), Bluebeard (1901) and Cinderella (1899). She died on 15 June 1937 in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, Val-de-Marne, France.
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- Director
Renée Carl was born on 10 June 1875 in Fontenay-le-Comte, Vendée, France. She was an actress and director, known for Severo Torelli (1914), Fantômas: In the Shadow of the Guillotine (1913) and Fantômas: The Dead Man Who Killed (1913). She died on 31 July 1954 in Paris, France.- Yvette Andréyor was born as Yvette Louise Pauline Royé in Paris, France in 1891. She was the daughter of the artist Jean-Baptiste André Roye and Marie-Louise Carcel. At age six, she made her stage debut at the Théâtre de l'Odéon. She continued her artistic training at the Conservatoire where she would win the first prize in 1913. Then she played at the Théâtre Antoine and in Belgium. She made her film debut in 1910 for the Gaumont studio. Opposite Léonce Perret she played the wife in Le Haleur/The Hauler (1911, Léonce Perret). In Le Bossu/The Hunchback (1912, Andrew Heuzé) with Henry Krauss, she was the first performer of Aurore de Nevers. Director Louis Feuillade noted her and made several short films with her, alongside Renée Carl, René Navarre, André Luguet or Suzanne Grandais. The next ten years, she was known as one of the favorite performers of Feuillade. In 1912, she played Josephine in Fantômas (1913, Louis Feuillade), a serial in twelve episodes with René Navarre in the title role. Three years later, she played the sweet Jacqueline Aubry in another serial, Judex (1913, Louis Feuillade). Aubry is a young widow who falls in love with the popular hero, played by René Creste, though her father, the evil banker Favraux, has caused the death of Judex/Jacques' father. Judex wants to take justice (henceforth judex=justice), but the sight of the innocent Jacqueline and her little son prevents him. In 1917 Andreyor married actor Jean Toulout. They made several films together and divorced in 1926. In 1917-1918, she acted again in Feuillade's sequel La nouvelle mission de Judex/The new mission of Judex. It would turn out to be her final collaboration with Feuillade.
Yvette Andréyor worked with many other filmmakers, such as Gaston Ravel, Jacques de Baroncelli, Robert Peguy and Germaine Dulac. She played with Romuald Joubé, her husband Jean Toulout and Gaston Modot in Mathias Sandorf (1921, Henry Fescourt), an adaptation of the adventure novel by Jules Verne. In 1923, she returned to the Théâtre de l'Odéon where she had made her stage debut. For several years she devoted herself exclusively to the stage. In 1928, she appeared in one last silent film, Les deux timides/Two Timid Souls (1928, René Clair), featuring Jim Gérald and Pierre Batcheff. In the 1930's, Andréyor only played in some short films and was offered supporting roles under the direction of Alberto Cavalcanti and Robert Peguy. After the war she shared the bill with Georges Marchal in Torrents (1946, Serge de Poligny) and with Bourvil in Pas si bête/Not so stupid (1946, ). The actress later focused mainly to the theatre where she played in Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author and François Mauriac The Fire on the Earth. She finished her film career with the role of the governess of Yves Vincent in La planque/The Hideout (1961, Raoul André). In total anonymity, Yvette Andréyor died in 1962 in Paris. She was 71. Her former husband Jean Toulout had died just 12 days before her. - Actress
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Musidora was a French actress, film director, and writer. She is particularly remembered for portraying the vamp villainess Irma Vep in the crime serial film "Les Vampires" (1915-1916) and the gang leader Diana Monti/Marie Verdier in the revenge-themed film serial film "Judex" (1917). Her screen persona depicted her with "heavily kohled dark eyes, somewhat sinister make-up, pale skin and exotic wardrobes". Her characters were among the most popular femmes fatales of their era.
Musidora's real name was Jeanne Roques. She was born in a Parisian family of artists. Her father was the composer Jacques Roques, while her mother was the painter Adèle Clémence Porche. Musidora started an acting career in her teen years, and made her film debut in 1914. She took the stage name Musidora, naming herself after a character of that name in the novels of Théophile Gautier. The name means "gift of the Muses".
Early in her film career, Musidora collaborated with the film director Louis Feuillade. He was a pioneer in the development of the crime thriller as distinct genre. By playing villainesses, Musidora became one of the most famous French actresses of the 1910s. But she also found some success as a film director and a film producer. She directed 10 films between the late 1910s and the early 1920s, though only two of them have survived. Two of her films were adaptations of the novels of Colette (1873-1954). The novelist happened to be a personal friend of Musidora, and was willing to help with the screenplays for the adaptations.
Musidora's acting career ended by 1926, but she continued working as a writer and film producer until the early 1950s. In her old age, she worked in the ticket booth of the Cinémathèque Française. In 1957, Musidora died in Paris. She was buried in the Cimetière de Bois-le-Roi.- Actress
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This celebrated star of the French stage had a sporadic love-hate affair with early cinema. After her film debut in Le duel d'Hamlet (1900) she declared she detested the medium; yet she consented to appear in another film, La Tosca (1909). Upon seeing the results, she reportedly recoiled in horror, demanding that the negative be destroyed. Her next film appearance, in the Film d'Art production of La dame aux camélias (1912), was a critical and popular success, helping give cinema artistic dignity. The following year she made Les amours de la reine Élisabeth (1912) in Britain. The receipts from this film's distribution in the US provided Adolph Zukor with the funds to found Paramount. Bernhardt, at 69, was offered a fortune to make films with other companies, but stayed with Film d'Art, appearing in Adrienne Lecouvreur (1913). She appeared in two more pictures after losing a leg in 1915, Jeanne Doré (1915) and Mothers of France (1917), both produced as WWI morale boosters. In 1923, when she was 79, her hotel room was turned into a studio so that she could appear in the film La voyante (1924). But her failing health halted production and she died before the film was completed. She was portrayed on the screen by Glenda Jackson in The Incredible Sarah (1976).- Actress
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
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Ève Francis was born on 24 August 1886 in Saint Josse ten Node, Brussels, Belgium. She was an actress and assistant director, known for Eldorado (1921), Yamilé sous les cèdres (1939) and La fête espagnole (1920). She was married to Louis Delluc. She died on 6 December 1980 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Gina Manès was born on 7 April 1893 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Thérèse Raquin (1928), Le diable en bouteille (1935) and La nuit rouge (1923). She died on 6 September 1989 in Toulouse, Haute-Garonne, Midi-Pyrénées, France.- Actress
- Costume Designer
Nathalie Lissenko was born in 1886 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire [now Russia]. She was an actress and costume designer, known for Kean (1924), Le brasier ardent (1923) and A Narrow Escape (1920). She was married to Ivan Mozzhukhin. She died on 7 January 1969 in Paris, France.A Russian-French Actress- Renée Jeanne or Maria Falconetti, born in Pantin (not in Sermano, Corsica, as many film dictionaries wrongly attest) on July 21, 1892 and died in Buenos Aires on December 12, 1946, is a French actress of theater and cinema. Joining the troupe of the Odeon theater in 1916, she made her debut in "l'Arlésienne", and played the heroines of Saint-Georges de Bouhélier "The Life of a Woman", 1919. She made a short passage at the Comédie Française (1924-1925), where she plays Rosine among others in "La Dame aux camélias" and "Lorenzaccio". His last role before a long stay in South America will be that of Andromache in "The Trojan War will not happen", Jean Giraudoux. She remains world famous for having embodied in the cinema the main role of "The Passion of Joan of Arc" by Carl Theodor Dreyer.
- Catherine Hessling was born on 22 June 1900 in Moronvilliers, Marne, France. She was an actress, known for Nana (1926), Little Red Riding Hood (1930) and Whirlpool of Fate (1925). She was married to Jean Renoir. She died on 28 September 1979 in La-Celle-Saint-Cloud, Yvelines, France.
- Simone Mareuil was born on 25 August 1903 in Périgueux, Dordogne, France. She was an actress, known for Polish Jew (1931), Un chien andalou (1929) and Genêt d'Espagne (1927). She was married to Philippe Hersent. She died on 24 October 1954 in Périgueux, Dordogne, France.
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This blonde stunner and German-born foreign import started life on May 18, 1908, in Berlin as Nathalie Margoulis (or perhaps Natalia Lyech) the daughter of a Russian banker and French pediatrician. The family moved to Paris when she was young where she received her schooling both there and in Switzerland. While little is known about her father, her mother was Ina Löscht (née Blumenfeld), who served at a French field hospital at the onset of WWII.
Lya broke into the business as a model and first appeared on film in the Francis Lederer starrer Maman Colibri (1929). MGM, checking out European actors, took notice of Lya and signed her, among others including Charles Boyer, to perform in French-language version of Hollywood movies. It was during this time she starred in the classic Luis Buñuel film L'Age d'Or (1930), which was co-written by none other than Salvador Dalí.
Returning to Hollywood, she failed to hit stardom as her thick accent was a primary hindrance. During this turbulent time, she met and married actor Charles Morton in 1931. That very brief marriage produce one daughter. A second marriage in 1932 to business manager Percy Montague also ended quickly. She became a U.S. citizen in 1933. Touring successfully with the 1936 play "Night of January 16", only one decent film came her way, The Great Gambini (1937), but more money problems and an emotional breakdown stopped the momentum dead in its tracks. She made a brief return to Paris to perform in the play "The King's Dough" but was forced to escape with rise of Nazism. Left destitute now, she made a failed suicide attempt with pills.
Following unbilled parts in such films as George White's 1935 Scandals (1935) and Vagabond Lady (1935), she made a comeback of sorts, courtesy of a Warner Bros. contract, with the film Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939). This success led to roles in The Return of Doctor X (1939) and her last, Murder in the Air (1940), starring Ronald Reagan. A third short-lived marriage occurred with Chicago vending machine operator John Gunnerson, who was once married to silent star Anna Q. Nilsson.
The war-era 1940s saw major financial and career setbacks once again, eventually filing for bankruptcy. Later work included torch song singing as a club chanteuse and writing as a fashion newspaper columnist. Her life vastly improved following her stable fourth marriage to George Feit, which lasted until her death. The couple settled in Newport Beach, California where she involved herself in charity work. Lya died of a heart ailment at age 78, on June 2, 1986.- Caridad de Laberdesque is known for L'Age d'Or (1930).
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At age 16, Annabella was chosen by Abel Gance to appear in Napoleon (1927). In the 30s, she became a star of French movies. She made movies in numerous other countries, before being called to Hollywood in 1938, where she met and married Tyrone Power. She remained in the USA until 1947. Then she attempted a comeback in France. She retired from show business in 1954.- Actress
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Anne Chevalier was born on 18 December 1912 in Papeete, Tahiti. She was an actress, known for Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931), Czarna perla (1934) and Submission (2020). She was married to Alexandre Gordon Bourgerie. She died on 13 February 1977 in Tahiti, French Polynesia.- Rolla France was born on 2 September 1910 in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France. She is an actress, known for À Nous la Liberté (1931), Le premier mot d'amour (1932) and Adhémar Lampiot (1932).
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Pauline Carton was born on 4 July 1884 in Biarritz, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France. She was an actress, known for The Longest Day (1962), Ce cochon de Morin (1932) and The New Testament (1936). She died on 17 June 1974 in Paris, France.- Odette Talazac was born on 6 May 1883 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for The Rules of the Game (1939), Figaro (1929) and The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (1942). She died on 29 March 1948 in Paris, France.
- Sévérine Lerczinska is known for Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), Ce monde est merveilleux (1981) and Jacquou le croquant (1969).
- Marcelle Hainia was born on 13 November 1896 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Rififi (1955), Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932) and It Happened at the Inn (1943). She died on 9 August 1968 in Paris, France.
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One of the brightest film stars to grace the screen was born Emilie Claudette Chauchoin on September 13, 1903, in Saint Mandé, France where her father owned a bakery at 57, rue de la République (now Avenue Général de Gaulle). The family moved to the United States when she was three. As Claudette grew up, she wanted nothing more than to play to Broadway audiences (in those days, any actress or actor worth their salt went for Broadway, not Hollywood). After her formal education ended, she enrolled in the Art Students League, where she paid for her dramatic training by working in a dress shop. She made her Broadway debut in 1923 in the stage production of "The Wild Wescotts". It was during this event that she adopted the name Claudette Colbert.
When the Great Depression shut down most of the theaters, Claudette decided to make a go of it in films. Her first film was called For the Love of Mike (1927). Unfortunately, it was a box-office disaster. She wasn't real keen on the film industry, but with an extreme scarcity in theatrical roles, she had no choice but to remain. In 1929 she starred as Joyce Roamer in The Lady Lies (1929). The film was a success and later that year she had another hit entitled The Hole in the Wall (1929). In 1930 she starred opposite Fredric March in Manslaughter (1930), which was a remake of the silent version of eight years earlier. A year after that Claudette was again paired in a film with March, Honor Among Lovers (1931). It fared well at the box-office, probably only because it was the kind of film that catered to women who enjoyed magazine fiction romantic stories. In 1932 Claudette played the evil Poppeia in Cecil B. DeMille's last great work, The Sign of the Cross (1932), and once again was cast with March. Later the same year she was paired with Jimmy Durante in The Phantom President (1932). By now Claudette's name symbolized good movies and she, along with March, pulled crowds into the theaters with the acclaimed Tonight Is Ours (1933).
The next year started a little on the slow side with the release of Four Frightened People (1934), where Claudette and her co-stars were at odds with the dreaded bubonic plague on board a ship. However, the next two films were real gems for this young actress. First up, Claudette was charming and radiant in Cecil B. DeMille's spectacular Cleopatra (1934). It wasn't one of DeMille's finest by any means, but it was a financial success and showcased Claudette as never before. However, it was as Ellie Andrews, in the now famous It Happened One Night (1934), that ensured she would be forever immortalized. Paired with Clark Gable, the madcap comedy was a mega-hit all across the country. It also resulted in Claudette being nominated for and winning the Oscar that year for Best Actress. IN 1935 she was nominated again for Private Worlds (1935), where she played Dr. Jane Everest, on the staff at a mental institution. The performance was exquisite. Films such as The Gilded Lily (1935), Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and No Time for Love (1943) kept fans coming to the theaters and the movie moguls happy. Claudette was a sure drawing card for virtually any film she was in. In 1944 she starred as Anne Hilton in Since You Went Away (1944). Again, although she didn't win, Claudette picked up her third nomination for Best Actress.
By the late 1940s and early 1950s she was not only seen on the screen but the infant medium of television, where she appeared in a number of programs. However, her drawing power was fading somewhat as new stars replaced the older ones. In 1955 she filmed the western Texas Lady (1955) and wasn't seen on the screen again until Parrish (1961). It was her final silver screen performance. Her final appearance before the cameras was in a TV movie, The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1987). She did, however, remain on the stage where she had returned in 1956, her first love. After a series of strokes, Claudette divided her time between New York and Barbados. On July 30, 1996, Claudette died in Speightstown, Barbados. She was 92.- Actress
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Florelle was born on 9 August 1898 in Les Sables-d'Olonne, Vendée, France. She was an actress, known for The Threepenny Opera (1931), Liliom (1934) and La dame de chez Maxim's (1933). She was married to Marcel Foucret. She died on 28 September 1974 in La Roche-sur-Yon, Vendée, France.- Actress
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Diminutive, fiery-tempered Simone Simon was born in France, but spent much of her early childhood in Madagascar, where her father managed a graphite mine. Her schooling was somewhat unsettled, her family moving from city to city (Berlin, Budapest, Turin) before finally establishing themselves in Paris in 1930. Simone started as a dress designer, fashion model and occasional performer in stage musicals. She eventually met the director Marc Allégret, who took her under his wing. Her film debut was in 1931 and she had her first major hit as Jean Gabin's co-star in La Bête Humaine (1938), directed by Jean Renoir.
There were two halves to Simone's history in Hollywood. In 1936, Darryl F. Zanuck signed her to a contract at 20th Century Fox on the strength of a picture she had made two years earlier, Allegret's Ladies Lake (1934). She was launched with an expensive publicity campaign which accentuated her continental allure, particularly, her 'sexy pout'. During her tenure, problems surfaced regarding her command of English and also her limited singing skills. Dissatisfied with the roles she was given, Simone returned to France and 'La Bete Humaine'. She made a second attempt at Hollywood, acting in William Dieterle's The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) as Belle, the devil's handmaiden. The New York Times review of October 17 considered her 'completely out of key'. Simone's best work, however, was to come in the shape of the cult horror classic Cat People (1942). Producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur used her triangular-faced feline qualities to best effect in the story of a girl who obsesses about an ancient Balkan curse turning her into a panther. The film was stylish and subtle, creating imagined rather than actual menace. Simone's performance was commensurate with perfectly studied cat-like mannerisms. During the production of 'Cat People', Simone was under FBI surveillance because of her relationship with MI5 spy Dusko Popov. She made two further, less successful, films at RKO, then returned to France for good. Simone made several films there and worked on the stage. In spite of many affairs and relationships, she never married.- A classic beauty, blonde French actress Michèle Morgan was one of her country's most popular leading ladies for over five decades. Born Simone Renee Roussel on Leap Year Day (February 29) in 1920, she ran away from home as a teenager and studied acting under René Simon, beginning her film career at 16 working as a film extra to pay for drama classes.
The young actress soon caught the eye of director Marc Allégret, who cast her in Heart of Paris (1937), which clinched her stardom. Her remote, enigmatic features and gloomy allure had audiences comparing her to a young Greta Garbo. She went on to appear elegantly opposite Charles Boyer in the drama Orage (1938) directed by Allegret; opposite Jean Gabin in Moth and the Flame (1938) directed by Marcel Carné, as well as both Coral Reefs (1939) and Remorques (1941). She had her first top-billed roles in L'entraîneuse (1939) and La loi du nord (1939).
Michèle's eventual fled war-torn France for Hollywood and earned roles based purely on her European prestige. She did not stand out among the other female foreign imports of that time, however, such as Ingrid Bergman. Cast in rather routine sultry roles amid WWII surroundings, she received only a modest reception for such US-based films as Joan of Paris (1942) with Paul Henreid; Two Tickets to London (1943) with Alan Curtis; Passage to Marseille (1944) opposite Humphrey Bogart; and the noirish The Chase (1946) starring Robert Cummings.
Michèle succeeded much better at home continuing prolifically in such films as The Proud and the Beautiful (1953), The Moment of Truth (1952), Oasis (1955), The Grand Maneuver (1955), Shadow of the Guillotine (1956) (as Marie Antoinette), Grand Hotel (1959), Bluebeard (1963), Web of Fear (1964), The Diary of an Innocent Boy (1968) and Cat and Mouse (1975). Back in the late 1940's, she received the very first Cannes Film Festival award for "best actress" for her touching performance as the blind heroine in Pastoral Symphony (1946). She also received an honorary Cesar Award in 1992.
Married during the war and early post-war years (1942-1949) to American actor/singer William Marshall, Michèle's second husband was handsome Gallic star Henri Vidal and they appeared together in a couple of films, including both the historical drama Fabiola (1949) and romantic drama La belle que voilà (1950), plus The Seven Deadly Sins (1952) (albeit different "sin" segments) and Napoleon (1955). Following Vidal's sudden death of a heart at age 40 in 1959, the actress married a third time one year later to well-known French actor/writer/director Gérard Oury. They had unbilled cameos in A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later (1986). She was left a widow in 2006.
Semi-retired by the 1970's, Michèle's last feature film was a small bit in the Marcello Mastroianni film Everybody's Fine (1990). She retired in 1999 after a few sporadic 90's TV parts. She died in her home town of Hauts-de-Seine, France on December 20, 2016, at age 96. - Lise Delamare was born on 9 April 1913 in Colombes, Seine [now Seine-Saint-Denis, Île-de-France], France. She was an actress, known for Lola Montès (1955), Captain Blood (1960) and La Marseillaise (1938). She was married to Tony Taffin. She died on 25 July 2006 in Suresnes, Hauts-de-Seine, France.
- Mila Parély was born on 7 October 1917 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for The Rules of the Game (1939), Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Le cavalier noir (1945). She was married to Thomas Mathieson and Jean Marais. She died on 14 January 2012 in Vichy, Allier, France.
- Jacqueline Laurent was born on 6 August 1918 in Brienne-le-Château, Aube, France. She was an actress, known for L'abito nero da sposa (1945), Le Jour Se Leve (1939) and L'homme qui joue avec le feu (1942). She died on 18 December 2009 in Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, France.
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Edwige Feuillère was born on 29 October 1907 in Vesoul, Haute-Saône, Franche-Comté, France. She was an actress and writer, known for Olivia (1951), Lucrezia Borgia (1935) and Wicked Duchess (1942). She was married to Pierre Feuillère. She died on 13 November 1998 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France.- Actress
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Paulette Dubost was born on 8 October 1910 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for The Rules of the Game (1939), Les vingt-huit jours de Clairette (1933) and Les mystères de Paris (1962). She was married to André Ostertag. She died on 21 September 2011 in Longjumeau, Essonne, France.- French stage and film actress. She made her stage debut in 1912 in Marseille after studying at the Nice Conservatoire. She devoted herself to the stage for more than a decade, then entered into an active film career in 1930. She played in scores of films over the next two-and-a-half decades, specializing in long-suffering mother roles. She was particularly memorable as Sancho Panza's wife in 'Don Quichotte (1933)', for director Georg Wilhelm Pabst.
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Ginette Leclerc was born on 9 February 1912 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Nuit sans fin (1947), The Baker's Wife (1938) and La maison dans la dune (1952). She was married to Lucien Leclerc. She died on 2 January 1992 in Paris, France.- Micheline Francey was born on 19 October 1919 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Vestire gli ignudi (1954), La présidente (1938) and Le petit Jacques (1953). She was married to Pierre Bouchet de Fareins. She died on 1 January 1969 in Paris, France.
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Born in Caracas, young Elena (later to become Héléna) miraculously survived an earthquake there. She found a new home at an uncle's in New York City first, and later at another relative's in La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland. A very early theater enthusiast, Manson trained as an actress at the Conservatoire de Genève. She was soon hired by the prestigious Pitoëff company and appeared as the ingénue in the famous French-speaking production of Pirandello's "Six Personnages en Quête d'Auteur". Among her numerous plays, let's quote "La Tournée des Aveux" (as the 23-year-old spinster) by the side of Louis Jouvet, "Romeo et Juliette (playing Lady Capulet) in 1937 and, more recently, "L'infâme" with Roger Planchon (in which she was the mother of the monstrous curé d'Uruffe). On the other hand she gave a poetry recital in several Swiss towns titled "De Villon à nos Jours". On the screen, big or small, she appeared more than a hundred times and performed dubbing in hosts of French versions of foreign movies. Little known by the public she was very much in demand as an always dependable supporting actress. Her portrayal of Marie Corbin, the wrongly accused nurse in Clouzot's "Le Corbeau" will be forever remembered.- Madeleine Robinson grew up in a struggling working class background but found her métier as an actress after attending the theater school run by Charles Dullin, six years that she considered the happiest of her life. The stage would stay her main love even though she would lend her striking presence to over 100 roles in film and on Tv over six decades.She was particularly acclaimed in the theater for her Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire (a role Arletty also played) and her ferocious Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Sensitive to what she saw as unfair treatment by the French press and media she left her native country after 50 years and retired to Switzerland. She was still able to catch touring productions of plays there, but this way, she said in an interview, she was able to see only the worthwhile ones and not the mediocre ones she might have gone to were she still in Paris. She wrote a memoir on her career, Belle Et Rebelle. She regretted never having become a "star" in the sense that she was the woman the main male character would embrace in the fadeout, but she was grateful for the fellow actors she got to know and for getting to work with major directors like Jean Gremillon.
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Odette Joyeux was born on 5 December 1914 in Paris, France. She was an actress and writer, known for Sylvie et le fantôme (1946), Douce (1943) and Passionnelle (1947). She was married to Philippe Agostini and Pierre Brasseur. She died on 26 August 2000 in Ollioules, Var, France.- Marguerite Moreno was born on 15 September 1871 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Pique Dame (1937), Les Misérables (1934) and Jim la houlette (1935). She was married to Jean Daragon and Marcel Schwob. She died on 14 July 1948 in Touzac, Lot, France.
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Before Arlette-Leonie Bathiat went to the movies she was a secretary and had posed several times as a model for different painters and photographers. In 1920 she debuted on stage at a theatre. She only began to work in movies after 1930. After World War II she was condemned to prison for having been the lover of a German official during the ocupation of France. In 1963 she had an accident which left her almost blind. Her most important movies were filmed and directed by Marcel Carné ("Hotel du Nord (1938)" or "Enfants du Paradis, Les (1945)").- Actress
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María Casares was born on 21 November 1922 in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain. She was an actress, known for Children of Paradise (1945), Orpheus (1950) and The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne (1945). She was married to André Schlesser. She died on 22 November 1996 in Alloue, Charente, France.- Elina Labourdette was born on 21 May 1919 in Paris, Ile-de-France, France. She was an actress, known for The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne (1945), Elena and Her Men (1956) and The Shanghai Drama (1938). She was married to Louis Pauwels. She died on 30 September 2014 in Le Mesnil-le-Roi, Yvelines, France.
- Lucienne Bogaert was born on 6 January 1892 in Caudry, Nord, France. She was an actress, known for The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne (1945), Les papiers d'Aspern (1971) and Safari diamants (1966). She died on 4 February 1983 in Montrouge, Hauts-de-Seine, France.
- Jane Marken was born on 13 January 1895 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Children of Paradise (1945), La dame aux camélias (1934) and ...And God Created Woman (1956). She was married to André Marie Désiré Berthellemy. She died on 1 December 1976 in Paris, France.
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Paris-born Josette Day debuted in films at the age of five, but soon returned to the stage, including a stint as a child dancer in the Paris Opera. She did not return to the screen until she was into her adulthood, and her career took off. She played leads in countless French films, but is probably best known for the role of Beauty in Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (1946) (French title: "La Belle et la Bête"). She had an affair with Marcel Pagnol. It is to be noted that several English-language sources stated that Day had married and divorced from director Marcel Pagnol; however French sources have discredited this claim. The French newspaper Le Monde ran a correction (on 2 July 1978) of her obituary, stating that the union of Josette Day and Marcel Pagnol "was never consecrated by a marriage." Day's career lasted until 1950 when she retired to marry Maurice Solvay, multi-millionaire Belgian industrialist and businessman, who was reported to be "one of the richest men in Europe" during his lifetime.- Sylvia Bataille was an acclaimed French actress, who in 1939 won Le prix Suzanne-Bianchetti, given to France's most promising actress - other winners include the great actresses Audrey Tatou, Isabelle Adjani, Geneviève Bujold, Isabelle Huppert, Simone Signoret. Bataille acted in Renoir's Crime of Monsieur Lange, and A Day in the Country.
Her first husband was the troubled, philosophical novelist Georges Bataille (Ma mere, Story of the Eye - both filmed 2004). The Batailles' daughter Laurence (1930-1986) became a psychiatrist and acted in Renoir's movie French Cancan. Sylvia left Georges for Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) an influential and controversial French psychoanalyst. After Sylvia's early retirement from acting, she worked closely with Lacan. Both Georges and Lacan were influenced by surrealists, including Spanish painter Salvador Dali, inspiring Lacan to devise a unique synthesis of psychiatry and Surrealism. With Lacan, Sylvia also had a daughter, the philosopher Judith Miller (born 1941). Sylvia eventually married Lacan (1953). Judith married the philosopher/psychoanalyst Jacques-Alain Miller.
In the 1930's, Sylvia was a member of the great screenwriter Jacques Prevert's (Children of Paradise, Port of Shadows) agit-prop theatre company, Le groupe Octobre.
For 38 years Sylvia owned Gustave Corbet's still-controversial painting The Origin of the World. After her death, the French government received the painting to pay inheritance tax. Sylvia's sister Rose Makles married painter André Masson, who made a surrealist companion piece to The Origin of the World, which was attached to the Corbet canvas. Masson was a major influence on American abstract expressionists. Sylvia's other sister Simone Makles married the French government minister Jean Piel, who wrote and edited with Sylvia's ex-husband Georges Bataille. - Nane Germon was born on 10 June 1909 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Beauty and the Beast (1946), The City of Lost Children (1995) and Le malade imaginaire (1934). She was married to Constantin Morskoï. She died on 6 March 2001 in Asnières-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France.
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Prototype of the sexy cheeky French lady, Suzy Delair was discovered by Henri-Georges Clouzot, who became her companion and gave her two memorable roles : Mila Malou, inspector Wens' unbearable girlfriend in two films, Le dernier des six (1941), which he wrote, and The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (1942), which he penned and directed; and the mythical one of Jenny Lamour, a frivolous music-hall singer prepared to do anything to become famous who makes her poor husband insanely jealous in Jenny Lamour (1947). The rest of her filmography is rather disappointing, with a few exceptions such as Jean Grémillon's White Paws (1949) , where she is -once again - an unfaithful companion ; Gervaise (1956), René Clément's masterpiece as Gervaise's obnoxious rival or Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers (1960), another cinema milestone, even if her part in this film is minor. An excellent singer (Who has forgotten "Avec son tra la la"?), delightful in operettas, Suzy Delair could hardly choose between her two careers. This may be the reason why she missed out on more great roles than she finally interpreted. Nevertheless, Mila Malou and Jenny Lamour are now part of the French film heritage. Not everybody can boast having left such an imprint on several generations of movie-goers.- Simone Renant was born on 19 March 1911 in Amiens, Somme, France. She was an actress, known for Jenny Lamour (1947), The Adventures of Remi (1958) and The Pearls of the Crown (1937). She was married to Alexandre Mnouchkine, Christian-Jaque, Charles Gombault and Marcel Dalio. She died on 29 March 2004 in Garches, Hauts-de-Seine, France.
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Cécile Aubry was born on 3 August 1928 in Paris, France. She was a writer and director, known for Manon (1949), The Black Rose (1950) and Poly (1961). She was married to Brahim El Mezouari El Glaoui. She died on 19 July 2010 in Dourdan, Essonne, France.- Producer
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Nicole Stéphane was born on 27 May 1923 in Paris, France. She was a producer and actress, known for The Terrible Children (1950), Suspense (1949) and Monsieur et Madame Curie (1956). She died on 14 March 2007 in Paris, France.- Santa Relli was born on 2 September 1914 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Cécile est morte! (1944), Jour de Fête (1949) and Vive la liberté (1946). She died on 29 October 2010 in Noisy-Le-Sec, Seine-Saint-Denis, France.
- Nicole Ladmiral was born on 16 January 1930 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Diary of a Country Priest (1951) and Blood of the Beasts (1949). She died on 12 April 1958 in Paris, France.
- The face of Simone Signoret on the Paris Metro movie posters in March 1982 looked even older than her 61 years. She was still a box-office draw, but the film L'étoile du Nord (1982) would be her last theatrical release; she played the landlady. Signoret had a long film apprenticeship during World War II, mostly as an extra and occasionally getting to speak a single line. She worked without an official permit during the Nazi occupation of France because her father, who had fled to England, was Jewish. Working almost all the time, she made enough as an extra to support her mother and three younger brothers. Her breakthrough to international stardom came when she was 38 with the British film Room at the Top (1958). Her Alice Aisgill, an unhappily-married woman who hopes she has found true love, radiated real warmth in all of her scenes--not just the bedroom scenes. She was the same woman as Dedee, a prostitute who finds true love in Dédée d'Anvers (1948), a film directed by Signoret's first husband, Yves Allégret, a decade earlier. Hollywood beckoned throughout the 1950s, but both Signoret and her second husband, Yves Montand, were refused visas to enter the United States; their progressive political activities did not sit well with the ultra-conservative McCarthy-era mentality that gripped the US at the time. They got visas in 1960 so Montand, a singer, could perform in New York and San Francisco. They were in Los Angeles in March 1960 when Signoret received the Oscar for best actress and stayed on so Montand could play opposite Marilyn Monroe in Let's Make Love (1960). The Signoret film that is shown most often on TV and got a theatrical re-release in 1995, four decades after it was made is the French thriller Diabolique (1955). The chilly character Signoret plays is proof of her acting ability. More typical of her person is the countess in Ship of Fools (1965), a film that also starred Vivien Leigh ,which more than doubled its chances of being in a video-store or library film collection.
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This lovely, docile, sensitive-appearing blonde French leading lady started impressively in films at age 6, making a most notable debut in René Clément's Forbidden Games (1952). She abandoned acting a few years later for schooling and a normal upbringing. After a brief career as an interpreter and translator, she returned to the cinema as a young adult and met with great award-worthy success in mostly European movies, including François Truffaut's The Man Who Loved Women (1977), Chanel Solitaire (1981), etc.- Opulent French actress Suzanne Flon, who came from humble beginnings, evolved into a luminous stage and film star whose career lasted five decades. She was born near Paris, the daughter of a railway worker and a seamstress and at school developed an interest in writing poetry. Following high school she worked as an English interpreter at Au Printemps, a large Parisian department store, before finding a position with the famed songbird Édith Piaf as her personal secretary. Ms. Flon's first performance was as a mistress of ceremonies in a musical revue. She continued on stage and eventually developed an association with the noted playwright Jean Anouilh in the early 1940s; she played his heroine Ismene in "Antigone" and played Joan of Arc to great acclaim in "The Lark" in 1953. She also dabbled in avant garde works by Marguerite Duras as well as Shakespeare, Pirandello, Chekhov and Molliere and won a number of stage awards for her efforts. In 1959, she became a member of the Theatre National Populaire and appeared in several plays under the direction of René Clair.
Ms. Flon began in films with Capitaine Blomet (1947) before branching out internationally in the 1950s. She was an elegant standout as a free-spirited couture model who became the object of fascination and desire for the crippled painter Toulouse-Lautrec played by José Ferrer in John Huston's film Moulin Rouge (1952). She also impressed in friend Orson Welles' comedy-thriller Confidential Report (1955) as a listless patrician, and later played Miss Pittl for him in The Trial (1962) [The Trial]. War themes were prominent in her 1960s work. In Thou Shalt Not Kill (1961) [Thou Shalt Not Kill], she won the Venice Film Festival award for her resolute mother whose son resists the World War I draft. In The Train (1964) starring Burt Lancaster, Jeanne Moreau and Paul Scofield she had some excellent scenes as an art curator who becomes a detrimental figure in the Nazi's plans to secretly export masterpieces out of France during the French Resistance.
Awards continued to come her way with a number of stylish and sensitive "grande dame" roles. She won bookend César awards for One Deadly Summer (1983) [One Deadly Summer] as Isabelle Adjani's deaf but highly sensitized aunt, and as the mother of Lambert Wilson in La vouivre (1989) [The Dragon]. Her rich and soothing voice was also used frequently for French narratives in numerous documentaries. Ms. Flon continued to appear on stage, film and TV right up until her death of a stomach ailment at age 87 in 2005. - An excellent actress, Claude Nollier remains too little known. Maybe because she made few films, but isn't quality better than quantity ? Whatever the truth, none of her appearances, whether an important movie like John Huston's Moulin Rouge (1952) or an artistic flop such as Les trafiquants de la mer (1947), leaves a normal viewer indifferent. Hieratically beautiful and terribly cold, Claude Nollier is most often chilling, invariably attracting resentment from the other characters in the movie in return. Fitting this type of role to perfection she is memorable as the murderess whose distant airs play against her in André Cayatte's court drama Justice Is Done (1950); as Olga, the communist party envoy who must decide the life or death of the hero in Dirty Hands (1951); as Fernandel's malevolent sister-in-law in Le printemps, l'automne et l'amour (1955); and, among others, as the governess driven by her latent lesbianism in Lewis Gilbert's cruel and sensitive Loss of Innocence (1961). Of course, as every rule has its exception, she had no difficulty in portraying Toulouse-Lautrec's adored (and adorable ?) mother in the already mentioned Moulin Rouge (1952). More active on the boards than on the big and the small screen, Claude Nollier's movie career should nevertheless not be overlooked as it is now. She is a great performer to rediscover.
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Colette Marchand was a French prima ballerina with a relatively brief acting career. For her performance in "Moulin Rouge" (1952), Marchand was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
In 1925, Marchand was born in Paris, Her parents were Roger Marchand and his wife Alice Lioret.
Marchand started her career at the Paris Opera Ballet. By 1949, she was performing as a prima ballerina in Broadweay shows. One of her most notable appearances was in the musical revue "Two on the Aisle" (1951) by Betty Comden (1917-2006), Adolph Green (1914-2002), and Jule Styne (1905-1994). The show ran for 276 performances.
In the early 1950s, Marchand appeared in several television shows, such Ford Star Revue, the Colgate Comedy Hour, and the Ed Sullivan Show. She made her film debut as a voice actress in the avant-garde film "Venom and Eternity" (1951).
Marchand found critical acclaim for her supporting role as street walker Marie Charlet in "Moulin Rouge", who has a love affair with protagonist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (played by José Ferrer). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, but the award was instead won by rival actress Gloria Grahame (1923-1981).
Marchand returned to her dancing career. She appeared in the ballet "The Lady in the Ice" (1953) by Jean-Michel Damase (1928-2013), concerning a girl in suspended animation within ice. According to Orson Welles, who directed this ballet, the show "was very successful in London, and only moderately so in Paris, where it was very badly lit".
Marchand appeared in a few more films during the 1950s, but remained mostly a ballerina. Her career declined as she grew older. Marchand died in June, 2015, at the age of 90.- Actress
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Danielle Darrieux was born in 1917 in Bordeaux, France, to Marie-Louise (Witkowski) and Germain Jean Darrieux, a physician. She was raised in Paris. She was only fourteen when she auditioned for a secondary role in Le bal (1931): she got the part, and the producer offered her a five-year contract. She had her first romantic lead in La crise est finie (1934) and scored an international hit with the historical drama Mayerling (1936) in which she played Marie Vetsera opposite Charles Boyer. In 1938, she went to Hollywood to appear in the fine comedy The Rage of Paris (1938) but quickly returned to Paris.
Darrieux remained in France during the Occupation and was one of the leading actresses during this period, starring in major hits such as Premier Rendez-Vous (1941). In 1945, she appeared both on stage (in "Tristan et Isolde") and on screen (in Au petit bonheur (1946)). In the next three decades, she found several important roles, in films like La Ronde (1950), The Earrings of Madame De... (1953) -- in which she gave her best performance, as a society lady torn between her husband and her lover -- and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).
In 1970, she replaced Katharine Hepburn on Broadway in "Coco." Afterwards, she made occasional screen and stage appearances. But she made a triumphant comeback in 2002, playing Catherine Deneuve's mother in the international hit 8 Women (2002).
She died on October 17, 2017 in Bois-le-Roi, Eure, France. She was 100.- Maria Mauban was born on 10 May 1924 in Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France. She was an actress, known for Journey to Italy (1954), The Gendarme and the Extra-Terrestrials (1979) and Le concierge (1973). She was married to Jean Versini and Claude Dauphin. She died on 26 August 2014 in Ouzouer-des-Champs, Loiret, France.
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Leading French actress and dancer, born Annette Marie Mathilde Gautsch in Constantine, Algeria. Francoise was the daughter of French Artillery General Charles-Lionel-Honoré Arnould (1882-1969), who was stationed in Morocco when she was born. Her family moved to Paris in 1945, where she studied drama under Andrée Bauer-Thérond, and four years later made her motion picture debut. The story goes that the director Willy Rozier saw a photograph of her, was captivated by her face and petite figure and promptly cast her as the female lead in his drama Sin and Desire (1949), often considered his best work. For much of the succeeding decade Francoise enjoyed a pre-Bardot sex symbol status, usually cast as temperamental, brooding or promiscuous heroines or femmes fatale opposite leading popular actors like Jean Gabin, Alain Delon and Charles Boyer. She was directed on five occasions by Henri Verneuil, who, along with Roger Vadim, had a lot to do with establishing her preeminent screen personae. Her best known starring roles were in Forbidden Fruit (1952), Les amants du tage (1955), Jean Renoir's evocative French Cancan (1955) (as Nini, the bakery girl turned dancer), Des gens sans importance (1956), Le chemin des écoliers (1959) and Julien Duvivier's The Devil and the Ten Commandments (1962). Francoise's first exposure to American audiences was Vadim's Companions of the Night (1953), but some of her other films were banned in the U.S. and in Britain she was tagged as the 'X Girl'. Her career went into decline as Brigitte Bardot rose to prominence. Francoise continued to work as a character actress, primarily in television, well into her eighties.- Actress
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France's major sex siren of the early 50s, this lesser-remembered post-war French dish pre-dated bombshell Brigitte Bardot by a few years. Martine was born Marie-Louise (Maryse) Jeanne Nicholle Mourer on May 16, 1920, but little is known of her childhood. A chance meeting with comedian André Luguet steered her towards a career in the theatre. Trained by René Simon, she made her 1940 stage debut with "Phedre" billed as Maryse Arley.
In unbilled film parts from 1941, she subsequently caught the eye of Henri-Georges Clouzot who hired her for an upcoming film with the working title of "The Cat," based on the novel by Colette, but the project was scrapped. Nevertheless, she did attract attention in the movie La ferme aux loups (1943) (Wolf Farm), which takes advantage of her photogenic beauty and ease in front of the camera despite a limited acting ability.
A pin-up goddess and support actress throughout the 40s, Martine also appeared on the stage of the Theater of the Renaissance. A torrid affair with actor Georges Marchal, who was married to actress Dany Robin at the time, ended disastrously and she attempted suicide by taking an alcohol/drug overdose and throwing herself into the Seine River. She was saved by a taxi driver who accompanied her there. Ironically, the unhappy details surrounding her suicide attempt renewed the fascination audiences had with Martine up until that time. In 1949, she married her first husband, former American actor-turned-restaurateur Stephen Crane, who was once married to Lana Turner.
Continuing on with post-war French filming, she co-starred in such movies as Bifur 3 (1945), L'extravagante mission (1945), Trente et quarante (1946), Voyage surprise (1947), Sextette (1948), Je n'aime que toi... (1949), Une nuit de noces (1950), the title role in Dear Caroline (1951) and Adorable Creatures (1952). She scored her first box office blockbuster hit with the French Revolution epic Caroline Cherie (1953). Without a doubt, the success was prompted by her semi-nude scenes and taunting, kittenish sexuality.
From there she was off and running. Her film romps were done tastefully with an erotic twinge of innocence and gentle sexuality plus an occasional bubble bath thrown in as male bait. Her array of costumed teasers included the title role in Lucrèce Borgia (1953), as Lysistrata Daughters of Destiny (1954), Riviera (1954), the title role in Madame du Barry (1954), the title role in Nana (1955), The French, They Are a Funny Race (1955), the title role in Lola Montès (1955) and Defend My Love (1956). Several of the above-mentioned films were guided and directed by her second husband Christian-Jaque, her husband from 1954 to 1959. They later divorced due to professional conflicts and long separations.
A true feast for the eyes and one of the most beautiful actresses of her time, Martine tried to branch out internationally in films in the late 1950s. Unfortunately, Bardot had already taken over the top French sex goddess pedestal and Martine's fan base diminished. She co-starred with Van Johnson in the crime drama Action of the Tiger (1957), but it was met with indifference. She immediately returned to French/Italian films The Foxiest Girl in Paris (1957), The Stowaway (1958), La prima notte (1959), Ten Seconds to Hell (1959) and Atomic Agent (1959).
Problems with substance abuse and a severe accident severely curtailed her career in the 1960's. She continued with such films as The Battle of Austerlitz (1960) (as Empress Josephine), plus Un soir sur la plage (1961), The Counterfeiters of Paris (1961) and Beach Casanova (1962). She made her last film in 1963, which was released four years later as Hell Is Empty (1967).
Depressed, Martine turned alarmingly reclusive as a third marriage to French doctor Andre Rouveix also soured by 1962. One last marriage to fourth husband Mike Eland, an English businessman and friend of first hubby Steve Crane, seemed hopeful, but on February 6, 1967, Martine died of cardiac arrest at age 46 in the bathroom of a hotel in Monaco. Her husband discovered her. Newspapers hinted at a possible drug overdose but nothing was ever proven. She was buried in the cemetery of Cannes.- Actress
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Véra Gibson-Amado, known professionally as Véra Clouzot, was a Brazilian-French actress.
In 1941, Véra met French actor Léo Lapara, a member of the theater company of Louis Jouvet, who toured in Brazil during World War II. Vera married the actor, taking part in the company's South American tour that lasted almost four years. After World War II, Vera settled in Paris.
In 1947, Lapara had a role in Jenny Lamour (1947) by Henri-Georges Clouzot. Vera met Henri on the set with her then-husband and it was described as "coup de foudre", love at first sight. Clouzot hired Vera as the script girl of his next film, Miquette (1950). Vera divorced Lapara and married Henri-Georges Clouzot in 1950. She was directed by her husband in her first film, the 1953 thriller The Wages of Fear (1953), in which she appeared alongside Charles Vanel and Yves Montand. In a short film career Clouzot only performed in films directed by Henri-Georges, the most famous of which was undoubtedly the 1955 thriller Diabolique (1955).
Vera died suddenly of a heart attack in 1960 just 15 days short of her 47th birthday.- Janine Darcey was born on 14 January 1917 in Asnières, Seine [now Asnières-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine], France. She was an actress, known for Rififi (1955), French Without Tears (1940) and The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish (1991). She was married to Serge Reggiani and Gérard Landry. She died on 1 October 1993 in Fontenay-lès-Briis, Essonne, France.
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French ballet dancer Leslie Caron was discovered by the legendary MGM star Gene Kelly during his search for a co-star in one of the finest musicals ever filmed, the Oscar-winning An American in Paris (1951), which was inspired by and based on the music of George Gershwin. Leslie's gamine looks and pixie-like appeal would be ideal for Cinderella-type rags-to-riches stories, and Hollywood made fine use of it. Combined with her fluid dancing skills, she became one of the top foreign musical artists of the 1950s, while her triple-threat talents as a singer, dancer and actress sustained her long after musical film's "Golden Age" had passed.
Leslie Claire Margaret Caron was born in France on July 1, 1931. Her father, Claude Caron, was a French chemist, and her American-born mother, Margaret Petit, had been a ballet dancer back in the States during the 1920s. Leslie herself began taking dance lessons at age 11. She was on holidays at her grandparents' estate near Grasse when the Allies landed on the 15th of August 1944. After the German rendition, she and her family went to Paris to live. There she attended the Convent of the Assumption and started ballet training. While studying at the National Conservatory of Dance, she appeared at age 14 in "The Pearl Diver," a show for children where she danced and played a little boy. At age 16, she was hired by the renowned Roland Petit to join the Ballet des Champs-Elysees, where she was immediately given solo parts.
Leslie's talent and reputation as a dancer had already been recognized when on opening night of Petit's 1948 ballet "La Rencontre," which was based on the theme of Orpheus and featured the widely-acclaimed dancer 'Jean Babilee', she was seen by then-married Hollywood couple Gene Kelly and Betsy Blair. Leslie did not meet the famed pair at the end of the show that night as the 17-year-old went home dutifully right after her performance, but one year later Kelly remembered Leslie's performance when he returned to Paris in search for a partner for his upcoming movie musical An American in Paris (1951). The rest is history.
Kelly and newcomer Caron's touching performances and elegant and exuberant footwork (especially in the "Our Love Is Here to Stay" and "Embraceable You" numbers, as well as the dazzling 17-minute ballet to the title song) had critics and audiences simply enthralled. The film, directed by Vincente Minnelli, won a total of six Oscar awards, including "Best Picture," plus a Golden Globe for "Best Picture in a Musical or Comedy". Leslie was put under a seven-year MGM contract where her luminous skills would also be featured in non-musical showcases.
While Leslie's dramatic mettle was tested as a New Orleans nightclub entertainer opposite Ralph Meeker's boxer in Glory Alley (1952) and as a French governess in The Story of Three Loves (1953), it was as the child-like urchin who falls for a cruel carnival puppeteer (Mel Ferrer) in Lili (1953) that finally lifted Leslie to Academy Award attention. The film, which went on to inspire the Tony-winning Broadway musical "Carnival," earned Leslie not only an Oscar nomination, but the British Film Award for "Best Actress" as well. At her waif-like best once again in the musical Daddy Long Legs (1955), Leslie was paired this time with the "other" MGM male dancing legend Fred Astaire. The story, which unfolded in an appealing Henry Higgins/Eliza Dolittle style, was partly choreographed by Roland Petit, who founded the Ballet des Champs-Elysees, Leslie's former dance company.
While the actress gave poignant life to the ugly-duckling-turned-swan tale, The Glass Slipper (1955), choreographed by Petit and co-starring Britisher Michael Wilding as Prince Charming, Leslie also played a ballerina in love with WWII soldier John Kerr in Gaby (1956), a lukewarm remake of the superior Waterloo Bridge (1940). It took another plush musical classic, Gigi (1958), to remind audiences once again of Leslie's unique, international appeal. Audrey Hepburn, who had played the title part on Broadway, was keen on doing the film, but producer Arthur Freed wrote the part expressly for Leslie. It was also Freed who called up Fred Astaire to suggest her as his leading lady in Gigi (1958). Leslie tried the role out on the London stage prior to doing the film version. The musical wound up receiving nine Academy Awards, including "Best Picture," and Leslie herself was nominated for a Golden Globe as "Best Musical/Comedy Actress".
A few more forgettable film roles came and went until she returned triumphantly in a non-musical adaptation of a highly successful 1954 Broadway musical. The film version of Fanny (1961) was more adult in nature for Leslie and was blessed with gorgeous cinematography, a touching script and the continental flavor of veterans, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Boyer, and Horst Buchholz. At the movie's centerpiece is a child-like Leslie (at age 30!) who is mesmerizing as a young girl with child who is deserted by her sailor/boyfriend. Even more adult in scope was the shattering British drama The L-Shaped Room (1962) wherein the actress plays a pregnant French refugee who is abandoned yet again. She earned her a second British Academy Award and a second Oscar nomination for this superb performance.
On stage in London with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Leslie earned applause in another Audrey Hepburn Broadway vehicle, "Ondine," in 1961. While the mid-1960s and 1970s saw her film career take a Hollywood detour into breezy comedy with a number of lightweight fare opposite the likes of Rock Hudson, Cary Grant and Warren Beatty, she managed to shine with a complex working class mother role in the remarkable Italian film Il padre di famiglia (1967) starring Nino Manfredi and Ugo Tognazzi, and was spotted in the popular crossover film Valentino (1977) starring iconic Russian ballet star Rudolf Nureyev.
In the 1980s, Leslie appeared in stage productions of "Can-Can", "On Your Toes" and "One for the Tango". She also was invited and accepted to appear on American TV. At the age of 75, the actress won her first Emmy Award with her very moving portrayal of an elderly woman and closeted rape victim in a 2006 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999). More recent filming have included Damage (1992) by Louis Malle, Chocolat (2000) by Lasse Hallström, and the Merchant Ivory romantic comedy/drama The Divorce (2003).
Leslie's private life has been more turbulent than expected. She is divorced from the late meat packing heir and musician Geordie Hormel; from avant-garde Royal Shakespeare director Peter Hall, by whom she has two children, Christopher and Jennifer (both of whom have careers in the entertainment field); and from her Chandler (1971) movie producer Michael Laughlin.
One of the few MGM post-musical stars to enjoy a long, lasting and formidable dramatic career, Leslie Caron is still continuing today though on a much more limited basis. In 2008, the actress published her memoirs, "Thank Heaven," later translated to French as "Une Francaise à Hollywood". In 2010, she triumphed on the Chatelet Theater stage in Paris with her portrayal of Madame Armfeldt in Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music. More recently the still mesmerizing octogenarian had a recurring role as a countess in the British TV series The Durrells (2016). Over the years, she has received a number of "Life Achievement" awards for her contributions to both film and dance.- An only child, Emmanuelle was born Paulette Germaine Riva in Cheniménil, but eventually grew up in Remiremont. Her mother, Jeanne Fernande Nourdin, was a seamstress. Her father, René Alfred "Alfredo" Riva, was a sign writer. Her paternal grandfather was Italian. She dreamed of becoming an actress since she was six, so that the entire world would take notice of her. This ambition was, however, to be met with firm opposition from her own family. Emmanuelle's father, a strict disciplinarian to whom the word "actress" was basically a synonym for "prostitute", disapproved of her way of thinking, since it clashed with the simple values he wished to pass on to her. Emmanuelle felt great affection towards her parents, but, at the same time, was under the impression that they couldn't really understand what she wanted. A bit of a tomboy and a rebel in her schooldays, she showed little interest in studying, but always directed her passion towards acting, appearing in every year-end play. In her early 20's, Emmanuelle was to find out the true meaning of nervous depression. Having completed the seamstress apprenticeship she had started at age 15, she eventually resigned herself to take up this profession, also discouraged by the thought that, in a city like Remiremont, the only possible alternative was to become a hairdresser. The sense of boredom that was weighing her down actually got so devouring that sewing sort of became the only form of escape from the horror of her everyday reality. But luckily, things were soon to change for the better. The day Emmanuelle discovered the announcement of a contest at the Dramatic Arts Centre of Rue Blanche was the day she found the courage to stand up to her parents and state that she would have traveled to Paris to become an actress. Having finally understood the depth of her sadness, her family couldn't oppose her wishes any longer, so, on the 13th May of 1953, she arrived in Paris.
At the Rue Blanche contest, Emmanuelle auditioned in front of one of the leading actors and directors of the Comédie-Française, the great Jean Meyer. She acted one scene from "On ne badine pas avec l'Amour" by Alfred de Musset. Meyer and the other acting teachers in the jury were just mesmerized by her performance and immediately realized that they had found the next big thing. It goes without saying that Emmanuelle was awarded a scholarship and Meyer himself decided to take her as his own pupil. At 26, Riva was too old to enter the French National Academy of Dramatic Arts, but she soon got her big break anyway, since French stage pillar René Dupuy cast her in a production of George Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man". Her next theatrical credits were "Mrs.Warren's Profession" (Shaw), "L'espoir" (Henri Bernstein), "Le dialogue des Carmélites" (Georges Bernanos), Britannicus (Jean Racine), "Il seduttore" (Diego Fabbri). Emmanuelle's small screen debut was in a 1957 episode of the history program Énigmes de l'histoire (1956), "Le Chevalier d'Éon". In the program, she played the Queen of England opposite Marcelle Ranson-Hervé as the cross-dressing knight in the service of the French crown. 1958, on the other hand, was the year that saw her first film appearance, an uncredited role in the Jean Gabin movie The Possessors (1958). The following year would, however, mark a turning point in her career. Emmanuelle was starring in the Dominique Rolin play "L'Epouvantail" at the "théatre de L'Oeuvre" in Paris when one night she found a visitor in her dressing room. His name was Alain Resnais and he was a young director responsible for a few shorts and documentaries (including the Holocaust-themed masterpiece Night and Fog (1956)). He was apparently looking for the female lead of his first feature film, Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), based on a script by the great author, Marguerite Duras. Having seen a picture of Riva in a playbill of the production she was starring in, Resnais had immediately urged to see her. Without promising her anything, the director just asked Emmanuelle if he could take a few photos of her, so that he would have later shown them to Duras for a response. In addition to this, he also invited her at his place where he filmed her reciting some lines from "Arms and the Man". When he brought Duras the material, the author set her eyes on Emmanuelle's melancholic, enigmatic expression and immediately realized that they had found the one they were looking for. "Hiroshima Mon Amour" turned out to be one of the most acclaimed and representative movies of the French New Wave and launched both Resnais and Riva's careers in full orbit. Being somehow familiar with a sense of captivity, Emmanuelle gave an incredibly personal and involving performance as the unnamed heroine of the movie, and it was one that came straight from her heart. Playing an actress from Nevers who develops a love affection towards a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) while filming an anti-war movie in Hiroshima, Emmanuelle helped modernizing acting and female figures in film through an intimate, almost minimalistic woman portrayal that was quite unlike anything else that had been seen on the silver screen to that moment. Speaking her character's thoughts through a great deal of voice-over that could give the viewer constant access to her mind (making for an unusual amount of psychological introspection) , she was able to masterfully translate every last one of these feelings to subtle facial expressions whose richness and eloquence made her face the mirror of the compex soul she was baring before the camera. Combining this heartfelt approach with a refined diction that could perfectly deliver Duras' deep, existentialist lines of dialogue, she gave the world a new type of heroine who, while set apart by a distinctive intellectual charm, remained very humanly relatable. This ground-breaking acting was greatly praised by the critics of the time who were most open to innovation, including some that later became masters of revolutionary cinema themselves. Jean-Luc Godard stated: "Let's take the character played by Emmanuelle Riva. If you ran into her on the street, or saw her every day, I think she would only be of interest to a very limited number of people. But in the film she interests everyone. For me, she's the kind of girl who works at the "Editions du Seuil" or for "L'Express", a kind of 1959 George Sand. A priori, she doesn't interest me, because I prefer the kind of girl you see in [Renato] Castellani's film. This said, Resnais has directed Emmanuelle Riva in such a prodigious way that now I want to read books from "Le Seuil" or "L'Express"." This was Éric Rohmer's take on Riva's 'Elle': " She isn't a classical heroine, at least not one that a certain classical cinema has habituated us to see, from David Griffith to 'Nicholas Ray'." Jacques Doniol-Valcroze summed her up this way: "She is unique. It's the first time that we've seen on the screen an adult woman with an interiority and a capacity for reasoning pushed to such a degree. Emmanuelle Riva is a modern adult woman because she is not an adult woman. She is, on the contrary, very childlike, guided by her impulses alone and not by her ideas." And Jean Domarchi commented that "In a sense, Hiroshima is a documentary on Emmanuelle Riva." The phenomenal intelligence and dramatic intensity of Emmanuelle's performance made "Elle" one of the most indelible characters in film history: however, while Duras' screenplay received an Oscar nomination, her star-making turn was sadly overlooked by the Academy. At least she won the "Étoile de Cristal" (the top film award in France between 1955 and 1975, given by the "Académie française" and later replaced by the César) for Best Actress for her work in the movie.
One year later, Emmanuelle was known as a major talent and, consequently, plenty of directors from different nationalities were knocking at her door. She followed her Hiroshima success with two acclaimed turns in Le huitième jour (1960) and Recours en grâce (1960). In addition to playing these leading roles for French cinema, a scene-stealing Riva was also seen as Simone Signoret's feisty friend in Antonio Pietrangeli's excellent Adua e le compagne (1960) and gave the standout performance in Gillo Pontecorvo's superb Kapo (1960) as a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp. Enter 1961: another year, another career highlight. Emmanuelle was cast opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Pierre Melville's ground-breaking (and shocking for its time) Léon Morin, Priest (1961). In the movie, Riva's Barny, an atheist widow, and Belmondo's Morin, a young and seductive priest, develop a deep, theological relationship with strong sexual implications. Melville cast Emmanuelle thinking that she possessed the kind of intellectual eroticism the character needed and decided to demean her appearance as much as possible by having her dressed in the plainest clothes, so that Barny's major appeal would have been the cultural vivacity shining through her beautiful facial features. Riva and Belmondo's performances turned out to be outstanding and the film, against all odds, ended up being a big success. Riva next appeared in Climats (1962), the first (and only) feature film of TV writer and director Stellio Lorenzi, the man behind celebrated history programs such as La caméra explore le temps (1957) and its immediate predecessor, "Énigmes de L'Histoire", where Emmanuelle had done her screen debut. Adapting André Maurois' novel, Lorenzi hired Emmanuelle seeing her great interpretative sensitivity as being close to the nature of the character she would have played in the movie, also starring Jean-Pierre Marielle and Marina Vlady. In the story, Marielle is torn between sacred and profane love, leaving Vlady's vain and frivolous Odile for Riva's kind and good-hearted Isabelle. The same year, Emmanuelle scored another huge personal triumph as the title heroine of Georges Franju's Therese (1962). Her performance as François Mauriac's ill-fated 20th century Emma Bovary was a true masterpiece of psychological introspection: she perfectly captured all the key traits of the character at once, making her vulnerability coexist with her spirit of rebellion and her desire for freedom go along with a strong sense of self-destruction. Emmanuelle's work in the movie won her enormous raves and a sacred, unanimous Volpi Cup at Venice Film Festival. For the rest of the 60's (her golden period), Emmanuelle kept playing leading roles in French and Italian movies alike and also kept expanding her work to the TV medium. She found excellent, showcasing roles both in Thomas the Impostor (1965) (where she was directed by Franju for the second and last time) and in the lovely comedy The Hours of Love (1963) where she enjoyed a very unusual kind of wedding to Ugo Tognazzi. The third segment of Io uccido, tu uccidi (1965) paired her for the first time with Jean-Louis Trintignant. In this story of "Amour Fou", Riva plays a woman willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to save Trintignant's character, a man undeserving of her affection. Some TV work the actress did in this decade deserves to be noted as well. She reprised the role of Thérèse Desqueyroux in La fin de la nuit (1966), a dark and crepuscular adaptation of the Mauriac novel of the same name. This sequel follows Thérèse as she relocates to Paris where she has nothing to do but waiting for death to come. The TV play La forêt noire (1968), a fictionalized retelling of the relationship between Brahms and the Schumanns, featured another remarkable Riva performance, and so did Caterina (1963), which saw her taking on the role of Caterina Cornaro.
Going into the 70's and 80's, it wasn't easy for Emmanuelle to keep replicating the impact of her early performances and, while she always played leading roles in her native France, the majority of her movies didn't have a great international resonance. Misguided productions like Fernando Arrabal's I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse (1973) proved totally unworthy of her talent. Like her contemporaries Delphine Seyrig, Bernadette Lafont, Bulle Ogier and Edith Scob, she liked to pick alternative, anti-mainstream projects, stating that she had no interest in doing things that had already been done before. In this period, she declined countless roles because she found them too traditional and, as a direct consequence of this, most directors stopped making her any more offers. Between 1982 and 1983 she was served with another couple of meaty parts to sink her teeth into. The first was in Marco Bellocchio's The Eyes, the Mouth (1982) (an underrated sequel of sorts to Fists in the Pocket (1965)) as the mother of Lou Castel, here taking on the role of Giovanni, the actor who had supposedly played Alessandro in the classic movie. The second was in Philippe Garrel's poignant Liberté, la nuit (1984) where she was paired with the director's father, the glorious actor, Maurice Garrel. In the subsequent years, Emmanuelle always found work in respectable productions, with the great director occasionally calling her for a project of superior quality (like Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors: Blue (1993)) but the great roles seemed to be way behind her by now. In 2008, she had a nice cameo in A Man and His Dog (2008), a French remake of Umberto D. (1952) which reunited her with her "Léon Morin, prêtre" co-star, Jean-Paul Belmondo. Riva briefly appears in the movie as a gentle lady who meets Belmondo's character -not coincidentally- in a church. She was soon to enjoy, however, an incredible and unforeseen career renaissance.
In 2010, Emmanuelle was cast in Michael Haneke's latest movie, Amour (2012). The script managed as well to get Jean-Louis Trintignant out of retirement and frequent Haneke collaborator Isabelle Huppert also got on board for the ride. Haneke had written the script with precisely Trintignant in mind, but hadn't already thought of a specific actress to play the leading female role. The director had greatly admired Emmanuelle's performance in "Hiroshima Mon Amour", but wasn't much familiar with her subsequent work. Still, a recent photo of hers lead him to think that she would have been believable as Trintignant's wife and decided to audition her along with a few other actresses her age. It soon became obvious that she was the best choice in the world. The Austrian director's most recent masterpiece follows Georges (Trintignant) and Anne (Riva), a long time married couple whose life changes drastically when she suffers a stroke. An incredibly deep reflection about the two most important components of life, love and death, Haneke's heartbreaking movie took Cannes film festival by storm, making obvious from the day it was screened that no other film had the slightest possibility to win the Golden Palm. A fundamental part of "Amour"'s success were of course the immense central performances of its two leads. Jury president Nanni Moretti would have liked to give "Amour" the main festival prize along with top acting honors for its two veteran stars, but unfortunately a festival rule forbids to give any other major award to the Golden Palm winner. Moretti was displeased by this, but he still managed to find a way to recognize Trintignant and Riva's work. Although the Best Actor Award went to Mads Mikkelsen for The Hunt (2012) and the Best Actress Award was given to Cosmina Stratan and Cristina Flutur for Beyond the Hills (2012), the Golden Palm which the director was awarded was given alongside a special mention to the film's leads for their indispensable work. All three were invited on the stage to make an acceptance speech: it was one of the highest honors a thespian could ever dream of. Although Haneke remains the only official recipient of the Palm, Riva and Trintignant were, in spirit, the big acting winners of the 65th edition of the prestigious film festival. But the love for "Amour" wasn't to end here. After it amazed the audience at Toronto film festival, it became clear that the film would have done this over and over while getting screened all around the globe. Further accolades for the movie came at the end of November, when it scored an impressive four wins at the European Film Awards (Picture, Director, Actor and Actress). In the following weeks, Emmanuelle also racked up a good share of critic awards in America, including wins from major groups such as the National Society of Film Critics. On Oscar nominations day, Emmanuelle's performance was recognized along with the movie, its director and its screenplay. Having traveled to New York to attend the 2013 National Board of Review awards (where Amour had been named "Best Foreign Language Film"), Emmanuelle was still there when, bright and early, her room neighbors' jubilation cheers told her that she had been nominated. In great humbleness, she stated that she didn't expect it because 'there's plenty of talented people everywhere'. Shortly after, she also added a BAFTA to her mantle. After her triumph, Culture and communication Minister Aurélie Filippetti complimented Emmanuelle on her charisma and on the quality of her performance and stated that she would have defended France's colors at the upcoming Oscars. Emmanuelle's next appointment was with an overdue first César. After receiving a well-deserved standing ovation, she made a very beautiful and moving speech, quoting Von Kleist and paying homage to Maurice Garrel. A couple of days later she attended the Oscars and eventually failed to win the award, but this couldn't change the fact that she had made history already. Having always been in possession of one of cinema's most expressive faces, being equally effective with her physical language and having displayed unsurpassable courage and honesty in portraying the deterioration of Anne's body and soul, Emmanuelle gave a performance that went beyond every linguistic barrier and strongly touched and affected everyone who saw it. Her stunning work is for the ages.
Having hit such a high note near the end of her film career, it seems only natural that Emmanuelle did the same thing on the Parisian stage shortly after, scoring a new triumph in Didier Bezace's production of Marguerite Duras' play "Savannah Bay", which marked her theatrical return after a 13 years absence. Acting a text of the celebrated author who had penned the movie which had simultaneously given her immediate fame and screen immortality was the most inspired way to bring her exceptional career to full circle. Duras had written the part (originally performed by Madeleine Renaud) on the condition that only an actress no longer in the spring of youth would have played it: disregarding this wish would have been a mistake, but it must be added that no other actress in the same age range and associated with the author could have been an equally perfect choice. Wearing that slightly absent look loaded with a mixture of vulnerability and melancholy that only she can do so effectively, the actress reached- for the few, privileged ones who witnessed this new achievement- some basically unmatchable levels of heartbreak, repeating several times the words 'mon amour' to such an involving and powerful effect no one else could have produced. The actress stated that she would have probably refused to ever return to the stage hadn't she been offered this part. And her choice was, once again, a winning one. Emmanuelle kept working regularly for the next two years-- shooting films and doing poetry recitals all around Europe-- until she died on the 27 January 2017 after a secret battle with cancer. As profoundly devastating as the news of this artistic and human loss were, the world had to salute with utmost admiration a woman who, true to her formidable spirit, always lived a life that was determined by the choices she wanted.
Now, considering that she won her first audience by acting one scene from "On ne badine pas avec l'Amour" in front of her future mentor, got her international consecration by playing the leading role in "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and rose from her ashes with her superlative work in "Amour", one can conclude that the word Amour is most definitely a good luck charm to Emmanuelle Riva. - Claire Maurier was born on 27 March 1929 in Céret, Pyrénées-Orientales, France. She is an actress, known for The 400 Blows (1959), Amélie (2001) and A Bad Son (1980).
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Marika Green was born on 21 June 1943 in Södermalm, Stockholm, Stockholms län, Sweden. She is an actress, known for Pickpocket (1959), Les enquêtes du commissaire Maigret (1967) and Emmanuelle (1974). She is married to Christian Berger.- Actress
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Born in Pittsburgh, Marpessa Dawn moved to England as a teenager and started acting in small roles in television; upon moving to France, she danced and sang in nightclubs while at times working as a governess before getting her big break as "Eurydice" in "Black Orpheus". Married twice, she left five children and four grandchildren at her death, which occurred forty-one days after that of her co-star in "Black Orpheus", Breno Mello.An American-French actress- Dolly Scal is known for Pickpocket (1959).
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Over the course of a five-decade career, she starred in nearly 150 films. She is a three-time César Award winner (1977, 1996, 2002), a two-time Molière Award winner, a BAFTA nominee, and a recipient of several international prizes including the Volpi Cup (Best actress) at the 1965 Venice Film Festival for Three Rooms in Manhattan.
Born in 1931, she was raised by her single mother, a midwife from Normandy. After studying to become a midwife like her mother, she enrolled at the prestigious Conservatoire de la rue Blanche in Paris. After graduating in 1954 with the "First Prize in Modern and Classical Comedy", she joined the Comédie Française, where she was a resident actor from 1954-57.
In 1955, she began her film career, making her film debut in Treize à table (1955), but it was with theatre that she started to attract the attention of critics. Her performance in Jean Cocteau's play La Machine à écrire in 1956 was admired by the author who called her "The finest dramatic temperament of the Postwar period"
In 1956 she was awarded the Prix Suzanne Bianchetti as best up-and-coming young actress but only with Luchino Visconti's epic Rocco and His Brothers (1960), she was able to draw the public's attention to her. In 1962, she married Italian actor Renato Salvatori. Travelling back and forth between two film careers in France and Italy, Girardot also worked with renown Italian directors, including Marco Ferreri in the scandalous The Ape Woman (1964).
Famously ignored by French New Wave directors (with the exception of Claude Lelouch), Girardot found her glory in popular cinema alongside more established and traditional directors such as Jean Delannoy, Michel Boisrond, André Cayatte, Gilles Grangier, or André Hunebelle.
By the end of the 1960s, she had become a movie star and a box-office magnet in France with such films as Vice and Virtue (1963); Live for Life (1967); Love Is a Funny Thing (1969); and Death of Love (1970), the fact-based tale of a middle-aged teacher whose affair with a much younger student made her the object of bourgeoisie ridicule. The film was nominated for a Golden Globe, and remains Girardot's biggest box office hit in France.
Throughout the 1970s, Girardot came back and forth between drama and comedy, proving herself an adept comedienne in such successful comedies as Claude Zidi's La zizanie (1978), Michel Audiard's _Elle boit pas, elle fume pas, elle drague pas, mais... elle cause! (1970)_ and Philippe de Broca's Dear Inspector (1977). She also played the mother of upcoming stars like Isabelle Adjani in the hit teen movie The Slap (1974), and Isabelle Huppert in the drama Docteur Françoise Gailland (1976).
The 1980s were less kind, as her film career floundered and parts dwindled. However, Girardot had a major comeback on the big screen playing a peasant wife in Claude Lelouch's Les Misérables (1995).- Édith Scob was a French stage and screen actress. Though Édith Scob was a major figure in French theater for over half a century and appeared in over a hundred feature film and television productions, she will always be remembered first for her performance as Christiane in Georges Franju's "Les yeux sans visage/Eyes Without a Face" (1960). It was two years before that Scob, still a student of French and drama at the Sorbonne, had begun appearing onstage, launching a remarkable theatrical career that would include cofounding a theater in the late 1960s with her husband, composer Georges Aperghis. Later she appeared in films by Luis Buñuel, Raúl Ruiz, Jacques Rivette, Andrzej Zutawskiand, Olivier Assayas and Mia Hansen-Løve. Leos Carax cast Édith Scob in "Les amants du Pont-Neuf/The Lovers on the Bridge" (1991) and two decades later, he offered her the role of Céline, the close friend and chauffeur of Denis Lavant's mysterious Oscar in "Holy Motors" (2012).
- A strikingly beautiful leading lady of the Nouvelle Vague, Juliette Mayniel was the daughter of a café owner and his wife, born in the small rural community of Saint-Hippolyte, Aveyron, in southern France. After World War II, her parents resettled in Bordeaux. Juliette spent her adolescence there, went to high school, and, in due course, discovered amateur dramatics. Following a brief sojourn with a local repertory company, she moved to Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, aged twenty, hoping to resume further acting studies at the Conservatoire. However, stage fright got the better of her and she failed to progress beyond the entrance exam.
For a short time, Juliette found work in the field of haute couture fashion design. Through an advertising agency, her face first popped up on screen in a commercial for a brand of soap. The director Claude Chabrol later claimed in his autobiography that this clip led him to cast Juliette as the promiscuous Florence, coveted by two law students played by Gérard Blain (as the serious Charles) and Jean-Claude Brialy (as the rakish and hedonistic Paul) in his film The Cousins (1959). For this, her first important movie role, Juliette garnered good reviews. The New York Times described her performance as "thoroughly provoking".
Her success next prompted leading roles in period drama (Pêcheur d'Islande (1959)), a crime thriller (La nuit des traqués (1959)) and in Georges Franju's classic horror film Eyes Without a Face (1960) (as the hapless recipient of a face transplant experiment). Curiously, Juliette won her one major accolade, a Silver Bear at the 10th Berlin International Film Festival, for her role in a German-produced drama film, Kirmes (1960), directed by Wolfgang Staudte. Chabrol then directed her again as one of the murder victims of France's most notorious serial killer in Bluebeard (1963), and, as Lucie, the object of a disturbed young man's fantasy in Ophélia (1963). She acted among an international cast in the 'giallo' thriller Assassination in Rome (1965) and as Priam's daughter Creusa in the peplum spectacle The Trojan Horse (1961), love interest of Trojan hero Aeneas, as portrayed by muscular American bodybuilder Steve Reeves (chiefly famous in Italy for playing Hercules).
In 1964, Juliette divorced her husband, the actor Robert Auboyneau. She was for four years the partner of well-known Italian star Vittorio Gassman with whom she had a son (actor and writer Alessandro Gassmann). She continued to act in films of widely varying quality until 1983. Juliette eventually quit show biz and lived for many years in Mexico, where she died on July 21 2023, aged 87. - Actress
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Claudine Auger, a former Miss France 1st Runner-up (1958), received her dramatic training at the Paris Drama Conservatory and is best known to US / UK audiences as the stunning brunette "Domino" opposite Sean Connery in the James Bond thriller Thunderball (1965), She has kept fairly busy since her Bond days, acting in a number of Italian, French and Spanish films including The Bermuda Triangle (1978), Credo (1983), and La bocca (1991).- Actress
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Marie Dubois was born on 12 January 1937 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Jules and Jim (1962), La Menace (1977) and Shoot the Piano Player (1960). She was married to Serge Rousseau. She died on 15 October 2014 in Lescar, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France.- Actress
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Brigitte Bardot was born on September 28, 1934 in Paris, France. Her father had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance, and she proved to be very adept at it. By the time she was 15, Brigitte was trying a modeling career, and found herself in the French magazine "Elle". Her incredible beauty readily apparent, Brigitte next tried films. In 1952, she appeared on screen for the first time as Javotte Lemoine in Crazy for Love (1952). Two more films followed and it was also the same year she married Roger Vadim (the union lasted 3½ years). Capitalizing on her success in French films, Brigitte made her first American production in Act of Love (1953) with Kirk Douglas, but she continued to make films in France. Brigitte's explosive sexuality took the United States by storm, and the effect she had on millions of American men who had not seen a woman like her in a long, long time--if ever--was electric. Rise to the phrase "sex kitten" and fascination of her in the United States consisted of magazines photographs and dubbed over French films--good, bad or indifferent, her films drew audiences--mainly men--into theaters like lemmings. In 1965, she appeared as herself in the American-made Dear Brigitte (1965) with James Stewart (she only appeared in one scene). Just before she turned 40, Brigitte retired from movies after filming The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot (1973). She prefers life outside of stardom. While it enabled her to become internationally famous, it also carried with it annoyances. It was not anything for her to have "fans" enter her house or wander around the grounds of her home in the hopes of getting a glimpse of her or to take something that belonged to her. Paparazzi constantly hounded her with their cameras. She has been so soft-hearted that some people even have taken advantage of her generosity. After her life in the spotlight, Brigitte went on to become a leading spokesperson for animal rights and started the "Foundation Brigitte Bardot" dedicated solely to that cause. Her work in that realm is, perhaps, far greater than any film she could have made. Brigitte has been married to Bernard d'Ormale since 1992 and they reside in St. Tropez with their nearly 50 pets.- Actress
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When people gave Louis Malle credit for making a star of Jeanne Moreau in Elevator to the Gallows (1958) immediately followed by The Lovers (1958), he would point out that Moreau by that time had already been "recognized as the prime stage actress of her generation." She had made it to the Comédie Française in her 20s. She had appeared in B-movie thrillers with Jean Gabin and Ascenseur was in that genre. The technicians at the film lab went to the producer after seeing the first week of dailies for Ascenseur and said: "You must not let Malle destroy Jeanne Moreau". Malle explained: "She was lit only by the windows of the Champs Elysées. That had never been done. Cameramen would have forced her to wear a lot of make-up and they would put a lot of light on her, because, supposedly, her face was not photogenic". This lack of artifice revealed Moreau's "essential qualities: she could be almost ugly and then ten seconds later she would turn her face and would be incredibly attractive. But she would be herself".
Moreau has told interviewers that the characters she played were not her. But even the most famous film critic of his generation, Roger Ebert, thinks that she is a lot like her most enduring role, Catherine in François Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1962). Behind those eyes and that enigmatic smile is a woman with a mind. In a review of The Clothes in the Wardrobe (1993) Ebert wrote: "Jeanne Moreau has been a treasure of the movies for 35 years... Here, playing a flamboyant woman who nevertheless keeps her real thoughts closely guarded, she brings about a final scene of poetic justice as perfect as it is unexpected".
Moreau made her debut as a director in Lumiere (1976) -- also writing the script and playing Sarah, an actress the same age as Moreau whose romances are often with directors for the duration of making a film. She made several films with Malle.
Still active in international cinema, Moreau presided over the jury of the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.- With classic patrician features and an independent, non-conformist personality, Capucine began her film debut in 1949 at the age of 21 with an appearance in the film Rendezvous in July (1949). She attended school in France and received a BA degree in foreign languages. Married for six months in her early twenties, she never remarried. In 1957, she was discovered by director Charles K. Feldman while working as a high-fashion model for Givenchy in Paris and was brought to Hollywood to study acting under Gregory Ratoff. She was put under contract by Columbia studios in 1958 and had her first leading part in the movie Song Without End (1960). She made six more major movies in the early to mid 1960s, two of which (The Lion (1962) and The 7th Dawn (1964)) starred William Holden, with whom she had a two-year affair. Moving from Hollywood to a penthouse apartment in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1962, she continued making movies, mostly in Europe, until her suicide in 1990.
- Michèle Méritz was born on 24 September 1923 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for War of the Buttons (1962), Classe Tous Risques (1960) and Le Beau Serge (1958). She died on 28 May 1998 in Carcassonne, Aude, France.
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Mylène Demongeot, one of the blond sex symbols of French cinema during the 1950s and 1960s, managed to overcome typecasting and survived a long hiatus before a stellar comeback in her 70s. She appeared in more than 70 films, including such classics as the Fantomas trilogy.
She was born Marie-Helene Demongeot on September 29, 1935, in Nice, France, into a family of actors. Her parents met in Shanghai, China, and moved to Nice, where she grew up. Her mother, Klaudia Trubnikova, was a Russian-Ukrainian émigré from Kharkiv, who escaped from the horrors of the Russian Civil War. Her father, Alfred Demongeot, was of French-Italian heritage. The family was bilingual and young Mylène was able to speak Russian and French, but eventually switched to French.
As a young girl she was an outcast: she suffered from ruthless kids making vicious comments about her eyes (she was cross-eyed until she had surgery in her teens). She was fond of music and movies, a perfect escape from the horrors of WWII that devastated Europe during her childhood. At the age of 13, she went to Paris and continued her education. She studied piano under the tutelage of Marguerite Long and Yves Nat. She then studied dramatic art with Maria Ventura at Le Cours Simon in Paris. At 15 she became a model in the atelier of Pierre Cardin.
At 17, Mylène made her film debut in the supporting role of Nicole in Children of Love (1953). Appearing in three or four feature films every year, she rose to international fame in the late 1950s. She was together with Gary Cooper for the opening of the first escalator to be installed in a cinema (at the Rex Theatre in Paris) on June 7, 1957. She had a memorable seduction scene opposite Yves Montand in The Crucible (1957). Her first notable leading role was in Be Beautiful But Shut Up (1958) (aka "Blonde for Danger") in which she played a 17-year-old jewel smuggler.
Mylène further developed her screen image of a manipulative blond mistress in her brilliant performance opposite David Niven in Bonjour Tristesse (1958), and became permanently locked in the cliché image of a humorous seductress after co-starring with Alain Delon in the 1959 comedy Three Murderesses (1959). Her chance to update her film image came in period films. She played manipulative and coquettish Andromeda opposite Steve Reeves in The Giant of Marathon (1959) and the leading role of Rea opposite Roger Moore in Romulus and the Sabines (1961). Among her best known roles are the manipulative Milady de Winter in The Three Musketeers: Part I - The Queen's Diamonds (1961) and Helen in all three of the Fantomas films.
Mylène Demongeot became one of the blond sex symbols in 1950s, 60s and 70s French cinema. She co-starred with the major French actors of the time, including Jean Marais and Louis de Funès, in the Fantomas (1964) trilogy. Although she gradually phased out of the stereotypical image of a beautiful coquette, she still looked pretty convincing as a middle-aged Madame, which she developed in the 1980s and 1990s. At that time her acting career came to a pause, as she had been aging gracefully in the South of France. She was also a producer during that time and was the co-owner of Kangarou Films, a production company that she founded with her late husband Marc Simenon. After a lengthy hiatus, she made a comeback in 36th Precinct (2004). She has also appeared in Camping (2006) and La Californie (2006) by director/writer Jacques Fieschi, based on a short story by Georges Simenon.
In addition to her film work, Mylène has also written several books, the best-known of which would be "Tiroirs Secrets" and "Animalement vôtre". In the 2000s, she made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of her mother in Kharkiv, Ukraine. There she planted a commemorative tree and presented her autobiographical book, "Les Lilas de Kharkov" (The Lilacs of Kharkiv). In 2006, she was named Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters for her achievements in acting. She resides in her French hometown of Nice.- Actress
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Born in Denmark, she came to Paris at 18. She met Coco Chanel and Pierre Cardin and started as a top model. She met Jean-Luc Godard about a cameo in Breathless (1960), but she had to be naked and she refused to play in the movie. One year later, they wed and she became famous with the "Nouvelle Vague" movies directed by him, Jacques Rivette, and Agnès Varda.
In 1967, Serge Gainsbourg wrote his only film musical Anna (1967) for her, with the hit "Sous le soleil exactement". Then, she went to Hollywood for a few movies and came back to Paris. She wrote and directed Vivre ensemble (1973) after her divorce from Pierre Fabre. She later remarried, to Dennis Berry.- Actress
The daughter of actress Geneviève Sorya, in 1948 she played the part of Juliette in The Lovers of Verona (1949). During the 1950s and 1960s she made various films, including Montparnasse 19 (1958) and La Dolce Vita (1960), but only Lola (1961) , Jacques Demy, and A Man and a Woman (1966) Claude Lelouch saw major success. With the latter she had, but did not use, the chance to establish herself in America. Therefore she was only participating in second-row productions in Europe and America.- Actress
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Anne Wiazemsky was born on 14 May 1947 in Berlin, West Germany. She was an actress and writer, known for Au hasard Balthazar (1966), The Chinese (1967) and George qui? (1973). She was married to Jean-Luc Godard. She died on 5 October 2017 in Paris, France.- The radiant Françoise Dorléac is better remembered today as the elder, ill-fated sister of French film star Catherine Deneuve. The Paris-born actress, however, was actually the first to become a star and had quite a formidable career of her own in the 1960s until it was cut short. Born into a theatrical family in 1942 (her father was actor Maurice Dorléac), Françoise first appeared on stage at the age of 10.
Entering the film industry with the movie short Mensonges (1957), she studied at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique (1959-1961) and had modeled for Christian Dior by the time she started making any kind of cinematic impact. Slim, gamine, pale-skinned and a real brunette stunner, Françoise graced a number of movies before hitting celebrity stardom with François Truffaut's melodrama The Soft Skin (1964) and the classic James Bond-like spy spoof That Man from Rio (1964), both released in 1964. The two films showed the polar sides of Françoise's incredible allure and talent. In the former she played an airline stewardess who falls into a tragic affair with a married businessman (Jean Desailly) and in the latter she played a fun and flaky heroine opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo. Unlike Catherine, Françoise proved a carefree, outgoing presence both on and off camera. Known for her chic, stylish ways and almost unbridled sense of joie-de-vivre, she continued making strong marks as the adulterous wife in Roman Polanski's black comedy Cul-de-sac (1966) and even joined Gene Kelly, George Chakiris, and her sister, who was now a cinematic star by this time too, in the rather candy-coated The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), a colorful movie which paid homage to the Hollywood musical. She and Catherine, who looked quite similar, played singing twins who dream about living in Paris.
Her fun and funny side was always an asset and often revealed as in the films as Arsène Lupin contre Arsène Lupin (1962) and Male Hunt (1964). Branching out now in such non-French movies as Genghis Khan (1965), Where the Spies Are (1965), and Billion Dollar Brain (1967), the luminous Françoise was on the brink of international stardom when her rental car flipped and burned on a roadway in Nice, France on June 26, 1967. She was near completion of the last film mentioned at the time the accident occurred. Her part in the movie was left intact. Her early death at age 25 most certainly robbed the cinema of a tried and true talent and incomparably beautiful mademoiselle who showed every sign of taking Hollywood by storm, as Catherine later did. - Actress
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This provocative sex kitten had the obvious makings of a superstar blonde bombshell and could have ended up in film history annals as merely a second-rate Brigitte Bardot, but Marina Vlady rose above her sex symbol status and proved she was capable of so much more. In her prime she was nominated for a Golden Globe and won a "Best Actress" award at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival for her stunning performance in The Conjugal Bed (1963) with Italy's Ugo Tognazzi.
She was born Marina De Poliakoff-Baïdaroff, in Clichy, France on May 10, 1938, the youngest of four acting sisters. Her Russian-born father was a well-established painter in France. While young Marina trained in dance and initially seemed to entertain thoughts of becoming a prima ballerina, she discovered, as did her sisters, a closer kinship to acting. The most outgoing of her siblings, Monica caught the eye of talent agents via more uninhibited roles. Older sister Odile Versois, who possessed a similar feline beauty, was the first of her family to enter pictures. Marina (playing a youthful roller-skater) and another sister Olga Baïdar-Poliakoff made their minor film debuts in Orage d'été (1949) [Summer Storm], which featured Odile. The remaining sister Hélène Vallier was featured in Marina's highly-praised film Penne nere (1952) (Black Feathers).
In 1955, at the ripe young age of 17, Marina met and married director/writer/actor Robert Hossein, who featured her prominently and seductively in a number of his films including The Wicked Go to Hell (1955), as a femme fatale bent on revenge, Pardonnez nos offenses (1956), Double Agents (1959) and, notably, Toi... le venin (1958) [aka Nude in a White Car], which co-starred sister Odile. She had two sons by Hossein but the marriage lasted only a few years.
Gracing both French and Italian productions throughout most of her career, Marina was not shy at playing unsympathetic, even caustic characters, and proved adept at both saucy comedy and edgy drama, appearing for such notable directors as Jean-Luc Godard and Christian-Jaque. Playing opposite some of Europe's finest leading men, she was a vision in loveliness alongside Marcello Mastroianni in Penne nere (1952), a touching WWII drama, she also co-starred with Italy's top character actor Aldo Fabrizi in Too Young for Love (1953). One of her rare English-speaking appearances came with the Orson Welles historical drama Chimes at Midnight (1965).
Marina became a strong social and political activist, notably for women's reproductive rights, into the 1970s. She continued strongly in films with Sapho ou La fureur d'aimer (1971), Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil (1972), Let Joy Reign Supreme (1975), the Hungarian film The Two of Them (1977), The Bermuda Triangle (1978) and L'oeil du maître (1980). As she moved Into the 1980's, the actress turned more and more towards TV work.
Married three times, Vlady was the widow of heralded Russian poet/songwriter/actor Vladimir Vysotskiy, her last husband, who allegedly died of heart failure in 1980 at the age 42 after years of alcohol and drug abuse.
Later films would include Bordello (1985), in which she played a French madam; a smaller role as the wife of hotel manager Philippe Noiret in the comedy Twist again à Moscou (1986); leads in both the Greek drama Anemos stin poli (1996) and the gay-themed French film A Few Days of Respite (2010). She also had a recurring role in the French TV dramedy series Sam (2016).
In her later years, Marina and longtime companion, Léon Schwartzenberg, a leading French-Jewish cancer specialist widely known as a radical political activist, became involved in a number of social injustices. He passed away in 2003. As a writer, she published a book on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and continued performing on stage, including a political one-woman show on one of her books about husband Vysotsky. Marina outlived all her her elder sisters. Odile died in 1980, Helene in 1988 and Olga in 2009.- Actress
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Mireille Darc was born on 15 May 1938 in Toulon, Var, France. She was an actress and director, known for Weekend (1967), Galia (1966) and O.K. patron (1974). She was married to Pascal Desprez. She died on 28 August 2017 in Paris, France.- Nadine Nortier is a French actress born in 1948 and best remembered for her only film performance as the title character in Robert Bresson's classic Mouchette (1967). As the innocent country house girl who tries to survive in a harsh world of abuse from her family, Nadine (a non professional actress as Bresson used to cast on his films to get a more realistic experience) conquered the admiration of many viewers and critics. Sadly, this remains as her only film performance (along with the film trailer) and she never returned to acting.
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Françoise Fabian was born on 10 May 1933 in Algiers, Alger, France [now Algeria]. She is an actress and writer, known for My Night at Maud's (1969), Belle de Jour (1967) and Me, Myself and Mum (2013). She was previously married to Marcel Bozzuffi and Jacques Becker.- Caroline Cellier was born on 7 August 1945 in Montpellier, Hérault, France. She was an actress, known for Year of the Jellyfish (1984), This Man Must Die (1969) and Le zèbre (1992). She was married to Jean Poiret. She died on 15 December 2020 in Paris, France.
- Dominique Sanda was born in 1951, in Paris, France. When she was 16, she left her upper-class family and married, but divorced two years later. She found a temporary job as a Vogue model, when Robert Bresson gave her the starring part in his absorbing drama A Gentle Woman (1969); she was quite impressive as a young woman who commits suicide when she finds out that her husband is unable to love her for what she really is. She was then offered the female lead in Vittorio De Sica's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970), as the provocative daughter of a rich Jewish family. Afterwards, she worked with Bernardo Bertolucci on the much-discussed The Conformist (1970), as the sensual wife of an anti-fascist professor, and co-starred with Paul Newman in John Huston's spy thriller, The MacKintosh Man (1973). She worked again with Bertolucci in the epic, 1900 (1976), and won the Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Prize for her performance in Mauro Bolognini's The Inheritance (1976), as an Italian patriarch's daughter-in-law. She gave one more unforgettable performance in Jacques Demy's original musical, A Room in Town (1982), as a femme fatale. Today, in her seventies, she is still busy, appearing in international films and TV series.
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Béatrice Romand was born on 16 April 1952 in Birkadem, Alger, Algeria. She is an actress and director, known for Claire's Knee (1970), A Good Marriage (1982) and Graf Yoster gibt sich die Ehre (1967).- Geneviève Page was born on 13 December 1927 in Paris, France. She is an actress, known for Belle de Jour (1967), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) and Fanfan la Tulipe (1952). She was previously married to Jean-Claude Bujard.
- Laurence de Monaghan was born on 11 November 1954. She is an actress, known for Claire's Knee (1970), Molière pour rire et pour pleurer (1973) and Les grandes conjurations (1978).
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Isabelle Weingarten was born on 18 April 1950 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971), Passion of Mind (2000) and The State of Things (1982). She was married to Wim Wenders. She died on 3 August 2020 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France(undisclosed).- Michèle Moretti was born on 15 March 1940 in Paris, France. She is an actress, known for Wild Reeds (1994), Out 1: Spectre (1972) and Out 1 (1971).
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Stéphane Audran was born on November 8, 1932 in Versailles, Seine-et-Oise [now Yvelines], France as Colette Suzanne Jeannine Dacheville. She was an actress, known for Der diskrete Charme der Bourgeoisie (1972), Babettes Fest (1987) and Der Schlachter (1970). She was married to Claude Chabrol and Jean-Louis Trintignant. She died at the age of 85 on March 27, 2018 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France after an illness.- Actress
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Delphine was born in Beirut on the 10th April 1932 into an intellectual Protestant family. Her Alsatian father, Henri Seyrig, was the director of the Archaeological Institute and later France's cultural attaché in New York during World War Two. Her Swiss mother, Hermine De Saussure, was an adept of Rousseau's theories, a female sailing pioneer and the niece of the universally acclaimed linguist and semiologist, Ferdinand De Saussure. Delphine also had a brother, Francis Seyrig, who would go on to become a successful composer. At the end of the war, the family relocated to Paris, although Delphine's adolescence was to be spent between her country, Greece and New York. Never a good student, she decided to quit school at age 17 to pursue a stage career. Her father gave her his approval on the condition that she would have done this with seriousness and dedication. Delphine took courses of Dramatic Arts with some illustrious teachers such as Roger Blin, Pierre Bertin and Tania Balachova. Some of her fellow students included Jean-Louis Trintignant, Michael Lonsdale, Laurent Terzieff, Bernard Fresson, Stéphane Audran, Daniel Emilfork and Antoine Vitez. Her stage debut came in 1952 in a production of Louis Ducreux's musical "L'Amour en Papier", followed by roles in "Le Jardin du Roi" (Pierre Devaux) and in Jean Giraudoux's "Tessa, la nymphe au Coeur fidèle". Stage legend Jean Dasté was the first director to offer her a couple of parts that would truly showcase her talents: Ariel in Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and Chérubin in Beaumarchais' "The Marriage of Figaro". He also had her take the title role in a production of Giraudoux's "Ondine" from Odile Versois, who had gone to England to shoot an Ealing movie. Delphine's performance was greeted with enormous critical approval. The young actress stayed in Europe for a couple years more, starring in a production of Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband" in Paris, making two guest appearances in Sherlock Holmes (1954) (which was entirely shot in France) and trying to enter the TNP (People's National Theatre). She actually wasn't admitted because the poetic, melodious voice that would become her signature mark was deemed too strange. In 1956, Delphine decided to sail for America along with her husband Jack Youngerman (a painter she had married in Paris) and son Duncan.
Delphine tried to enter the Actor's studio, but, just like in the case of many of Hollywood's finest actors, she failed the admittance test. She would still spend three years as an observer (also attending Lee Strasberg's classes) and this minor mishap didn't prevent her from going on with her stage career anyway, as she did theatre work in Connecticut and appeared in an off-Broadway production of Pirandello's "Henry IV" opposite Burgess Meredith and Alida Valli. Legend wants that the show was such a flop that the producer burned down the set designs. One year later, a single meeting would change the young actress' life forever. Delphine was starring in a production of Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People" when one very day she was approached by a very enthusiast spectator. It was the great director Alain Resnais, fresh of the huge personal triumph he had scored with his masterwork, Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). Resnais was now trying to do a movie about the pulp magazine character Harry Dickson (an American version of Sherlock Holmes) and thought that Delphine could have played the role of the detective's nemesis, Georgette Cuvelier/The Spider. The project would never see the light of the day, but this meeting would soon lead to the genesis of an immortal cinematic partnership. Delphine's first feature film was also done the same year: it was the manifesto of the Beat Generation, the innovative Pull My Daisy (1959). The 30 minutes film was written and narrated by Jack Kerouac and featured an almost entirely non-professional cast including poets Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Peter Orlovsky along with painter Larry Rivers. Delphine played Rivers' wife in this well-done and interesting curio, an appropriate starting point to a very intriguing and alternative career. In 1960 she landed the role of Cara Williams and Harry Morgan's French neighbour in a new sitcom, Pete and Gladys (1960). Although she left the show after only three episodes, it is interesting to see her interact with the likes of Williams, Morgan and Cesar Romero, since they seem to belong to such different worlds. This was going to be the end of Delphine's journey in the States, although she would keep very fond memories of this period, stating in 1969 that she didn't consider herself "particularly French, but American in equal measure". In 1961 she would take her native France by storm.
Resnais had now been approached by writer Alain Robbe-Grillet- one of the main creators of the "Nouveau Roman" genre- to direct a movie based upon his script "L'anneé dernière". Having been awed by the recent Vertigo (1958), Robbe-Grillet was nourishing the hope that Kim Novak could have possibly played the mysterious female protagonist of the upcoming adaptation of his novel. Luckily, Resnais had different plans. Delphine was back in France for a holiday when the director offered her the role of the enigmatic lady nicknamed A. in his latest movie, Last Year at Marienbad (1961). Delphine accepted and finally took her rightful place in film history. The plot of the movie is apparently simple: in a baroque-looking castle, X. (Giorgio Albertazzi) tries to convince the reclusive A. that they had an affair the previous year. The movie has been interpreted in many different ways: a ghost story, a sci-fi story, an example of meta-theatre, a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, a retelling of Pygmalion and the Statue and plenty more. Resnais proved to be very partial to Delphine and didn't want her to just stand there like a motionless mannequin like the entire supporting cast did. As X. begins to instill or awake some feelings and memories into A., Delphine subtly hints at a change happening inside the character, managing to alternatively project an image of innocence and desire in a brilliant way. With her stunning, sphinx-like beauty being particularly highlighted by raven-black hair (Resnais wanted her to look like Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box (1929)) and her warm, seductive voice completing the magical charm of the character, Delphine made A. her most iconic-looking creation and got immediately welcomed to the club of the greatest actresses of France. The movie itself received the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival and remains Resnais' masterpiece, not to mention possibly the greatest son of the French New Wave. The gothic organ music provided by Delphine's brother Francis also played an important role in the success of "Marienbad".
Like he had done a couple years before with Emmanuelle Riva, Resnais had made another invaluable gift to French cinema and one would have expected to see Delphine immediately racking a dozen film projects after "Marienbad", but for the time being she preferred to return to her first love, the theatre. She always wished to avoid the perils of celebrity and started a very turbulent relationship with reporters. She made this statement on the subject: "There is nothing to say about an actor or an actress. You just need to go and see them, that's all". She also hated the fact that, after "Marienbad", many journalists had paraphrased many of her statements in order to get meatier articles or entirely made up stories about her. Her next film project came in 1963 when she was reunited with Resnais for the superb Muriel (1963). Wearing some makeup that made her look plainer and older, Delphine gave a first sample of her chameleon-like abilities and one of her most spectacular performances ever as Hélène Aughain, an apparently absent-minded, but actually very tragic antique shop dealer who tries to reshape her squalid present in order to get even with a past made of shame and humiliation. Providing her character with a clumsy walk and an odd behavior that looks amusing on the surface, she delegated her subtlest facial expressions to hint at Hélène's grief and sense of dissatisfaction, creating a very pathetic and moving figure in the process. This incredible achievement was awarded with a Volpi cup at Venice Film Festival. Delphine felt very proud for herself and for Resnais. "Muriel" turned out to be one of the director's most divisive works, with some people considering it his finest film and others dismissing it as a product below his standard. The movie's American reception was unfortunately disastrous: having been released in New York disguised as an "even more mysterious sequel" to Marienbad, it stayed in theaters for five days only. The same year, Delphine did a TV movie called Le troisième concerto (1963) which marked her first collaboration with Marcel Cravenne. Her performance as a pianist who's seemingly losing her mind scored big with both critics and audience and made her much more popular with the French public than two rather inaccessible movies such as "Marienbad" and "Muriel" could ever do. Delphine never considered herself a star though, stating that "a star is like a racing horse a producer can place money on" and that she wasn't anything like that. In the following years she kept doing remarkable stage work. 1964 saw her first collaboration with Samuel Beckett: she invited the great author at her place in Place Des Vosges where she rehearsed for the role of the Lover in the first French production of "Play" along with Michael Lonsdale as the Husband and Eléonore Hirt as the Wife. The three of them would then bring the show to the stage and star in a film version in 1966. Delphine would team up with Beckett on other occasions in the future and even more frequently with Lonsdale, her co-star in several films and stage productions. For two consecutive times she won the "Prix Du Syndicat de la Critique" (the most ancient and illustrious award given by French theatre critics) for Best Actress: in 1967 (1966/1967 season) for her performances in "Next Time I'll Sing to You" and "To Find Oneself" and in 1969 (1968/1969 season) for her work in L'Aide-mémoire. In 1966 she did a cameo in the surreal, Monty Pythonesque Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966), which was written and directed by William Klein (her friend of about 20 years) and starred Sami Frey, who would be her partner for her entire life after her separation from Youngerman. In 1967, she had a few exquisitely acted scenes (all shot in one day and a half) with Dirk Bogarde in Joseph Losey's excellent Accident (1967). Her appearance as Bogarde's old flame seemed to echo and pay homage to "Marienbad", from the almost illusory touch of the whole sequence to the suggestive use of music by the great John Dankworth. Delphine totally enjoyed to work with Losey, although their relationship would drastically change by the time of their next adventure together. The same year would also see the release of the spellbinding The Music (1967), her first filmed collaboration with Marguerite Duras. The author had always worshiped Delphine for her exceptional screen presence and for possessing the aura of a classic goddess of the Golden Age of Hollywood. She said about her: "When Delphine Seyrig moves into the camera's field, there's a flicker of Garbo and Clara Bow and we look to see if Cary Grant is at her side". She also loved her sexy voice, stating that she always sounded like "she had just sucked a sweet fruit and her mouth was still moist" and would go on to call her "the greatest actress in France and possibly in the entire world". "La Musica" isn't the most remembered Seyrig-Duras collaboration, but nevertheless occupies a special place in history as the beginning of a beautiful friendship between two artists that would become strictly associated with each other for eternity. Delphine's performance won her the "Étoile de Cristal" (the top film award given in France by the "Académie Française" between 1955 and 1975 and later replaced by the César). The actress later made a glorious Hedda Gabler for French television, although she never much enjoyed to do work for this kind of medium. She often complained about the poverty of means and little professionalism of French TV and declined on several occasions the possibility to play the role of Mme De Mortsauf in an adaptation of Balzac's "Le lys dans la vallée". In 1968 she found one of her most famous and celebrated roles in François Truffaut's latest installment of the Antoine Doinel saga, Stolen Kisses (1968), which overall qualifies as one of her most "traditional" career choices. Delphine's new divine creature was Fabienne Tabard, the breathtakingly beautiful wife of an obnoxious shoe store owner (Michael Lonsdale) and the latest object of Antoine's attention. It is very interesting that, in the movie, Antoine reads a copy of "Le lys dans la vallée" and compares Fabienne to the novel's heroine. At one point, Delphine had almost agreed to appear in the TV production on the condition that Jean-Pierre Léaud would have played the leading male role. She later inquired with Truffaut if he knew about this by the time he had written the script, but he swore that it was just a coincidence. In 1969 she declined the leading female role in The Swimming Pool (1969) because she didn't see anything interesting about it; this despite strong soliciting from her close friend Jean Rochefort (whom she nicknamed "Mon petit Jeannot"). At the time, it was considered almost inconceivable to decline the chance of appearing in an Alain Delon movie, but Delphine really valued the power of saying "no" and the part went to Romy Schneider instead. It consequently came of great surprise when, the same year, she accepted the role of Marie-Madeleine in William Klein's rather dated, but somewhat charming Mr. Freedom (1968), where she played most of her scenes semi-naked. But Delphine, as usual, had her valid reasons to appear in this strong satire of American Imperialism. Klein's comic strip adaptation isn't without its enjoyable moments (like a scene where the Americans use a map to indicate the Latin dictatorships as the civilized, democratic world), but goes on for too long and suffers every time Delphine disappears from the screen. Still, it remains a must for Seyrig fans, as you'd never expect to see the most intellectual of actresses having a martial arts fight with the gigantic John Abbey and giving a performance of pure comic genius in the tradition of Kay Kendall. The same year she also had a cameo as the Prostitute in Luis Buñuel's masterful The Milky Way (1969). Delphine read the entire script, but eventually regretted that she hadn't watched Alain Cuny playing his scene, because, in that case, she would have played her own very differently and brought the movie to full circle, something she thought she hadn't done. She promised Buñuel to do better on the next occasion they would have worked together.
In 1970, Delphine eventually agreed to appear in Le lys dans la vallée (1970) under the direction of Marcel Cravenne, although the male protagonist wasn't played by Léaud, but by Richard Leduc. It turned out to be one of the best ever adaptations of a French classic and her performance was titanic. She then played the Lilac Fairy in Jacques Demy's lovely musical Donkey Skin (1970), which starred a young Catherine Deneuve in the title role, but boosted a superlative supporting cast including Jacques Perrin, Micheline Presle, Sacha Pitoëff and Jean Marais (who sort of provided a link with Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (1946)). Despite all this profusion of talent, Delphine effortlessly stole the movie with her sassy smile, impeccable comedic timing and multi-colored wardrobe. Although she would go on to sing on future occasions, Demy preferred to have her musical number dubbed by Christiane Legrand. The following year, she won a new multitude of male admirers when she arguably played the sexiest and most memorable female vampire in film history in the underrated psychological horror Daughters of Darkness (1971). The choice of a niche actress like Delphine to play the lesbian, Dietrichesque Countess Bathory is considered one of the main factors that sets Harry Kümel's movie apart from the coeval products made by the likes of Jesús Franco or Jean Rollin. To see another horror movie highlighted by the presence of an unforgettable female vampire in Seyrig style, one will have to wait for the similar casting of the splendid Nina Hoss in the auteur effort We Are the Night (2010). Cravenne's Tartuffe (1971) was a delicious "Jeu à Deux" between Delphine and the immense Michel Bouquet. In 1972, Delphine would add another immortal title to her filmography, as she was cast in Luis Buñuel's surrealist masterpiece, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). As the adulterous Simone Thévenot, always wearing a sanctimoniously polite smile, she managed to give the star turn in a flawless cast: Fernando Rey made his Rafael Acosta deliciously nasty behind his cover of unflappability, Paul Frankeur was hilariously obtuse as M.Thévenot, Jean-Pierre Cassel suitably ambiguous as M.Sénéchal, Julien Bertheau looked charmingly sinister as Mons.Dufour, Bulle Ogier got to show her formidable gifts for physical comedy as Florence and the role of Alice Sénéchal, a woman who gets annoyed at not getting coffee while a man has just confessed to have murdered his father, proved for once the perfect fit for the coldest and least emotional of actresses, Stéphane Audran. The movie won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The next year, Delphine appeared in a couple of star-studded productions: she gave a brief, but memorably moving performance in Fred Zinnemann's The Day of the Jackal (1973) as a French woman who makes the fatal mistake of falling for Edward Fox's ruthless killer. People's memories of the movie are often associated with her scenes. She also appeared in Losey's disappointing A Doll's House (1973) opposite a badly miscast Jane Fonda as Nora. The two actresses didn't get along with the director as they both thought his vision of the story to be deeply misogynist. Many key dialogues were unskillfully butchered for the adaptation, diminishing the depth of the characters and the end result was consequently cold, although the movie has its redeeming features. The brilliant David Warner arguably remains the definitive screen Torvald and Delphine is typically impeccable in the fine role of Kristine, although one can't help but think that an accomplished Ibsenian actress like her should have played Nora in the first place. Although Losey wasn't in speaking terms with her any longer by the time the shooting ended, Delphine befriended Jane as they shared a lot of ideals and causes. Delphine Seyrig was of course a vocal feminist, although she didn't consider herself a militant: she actually believed that women should have already known their rights by then and that she didn't have to cause any consciousness raising in them. She would go on to work with more and more female directors shortly after, considering also that she had now begun to love cinema as much as theatre. In 1974 she appeared in a stage production of "La Cheuvachée sur le lac de Constance" because she dearly desired to act opposite the wonderful Jeanne Moreau, but from that moment on, most of her energies were saved for film work. She also grew more and more radical in picking up her projects: Le journal d'un suicidé (1972), Dites-le avec des fleurs (1974) and Der letzte Schrei (1975) certainly qualify as some of her oddest features, not to mention the most difficult to watch. Le cri du coeur (1974), although flawed by an inept performance by Stéphane Audran, was slightly more interesting: the director capitalized on Delphine's Marienbad image once again, casting her as a mysterious woman the crippled young protagonist gets sexually obsessed with. She made another relatively "ordinary" pick by playing villainous in Don Siegel's remarkable spy thriller The Black Windmill (1974) alongside stellar performers like Michael Caine, Donald Pleasence, John Vernon and Janet Suzman.
The following year, Delphine had two first rate roles in Le jardin qui bascule (1975) and in Liliane de Kermadec's Aloïse (1975) (where her younger self was played, quite fittingly, by an already prodigious Isabelle Huppert). But 1975 wasn't over for Delphine as the thespian would round off the year with two of her most amazing achievements. The Seyrig/Duras team did finally spring into action again with the memorable India Song (1975), another movie which lived and died entirely on Delphine's intense face. Laure Adler wrote these pertinent words in her biography of Duras: "In India Song we see nothing of Calcutta, all we see is a woman dancing in the drawing room of the French embassy and that is enough, for Delphine fills the screen". Coming next was what many people consider the actress' most monumental personal achievement: Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). It has become a common saying that, when you have a great interest in an actor, you could watch him/her reading the phone book. Seyrig fans can experiment it almost literally in Chantal Akerman's three hour minimalist masterpiece, which meticulously follows the daily routine of widowed housewife Jeanne. Akerman chose Delphine "because she brought with her all the roles of mythical woman that she played until now. The woman in Marienbad, The woman in India Song". The movie can be considered a filmed example of "Nouveau Roman": every moment of Jeanne's day is presented almost real-time -from the act of peeling potatoes or washing dishes- and every gesture has a precise meaning, like Jeanne's incapacity of putting her life together being expressed by her inability of making a decent coffee or put buttons back on a shirt. The movie is also of course a feminist declaration: Jeanne regularly resorts to prostitution to make a living, which (according to Akerman) symbolizes that, even after the death of her husband, she's still dependant of him and always needs to have a male figure enter her life in his place. Her declaration of independence is expressed at the end of the movie through the murder of one of her clients. Delphine's approach to the role was as natural as possible and she completely disappeared into it, giving a hypnotic performance that keeps the viewer glued to his chair and prevents him to feel the sense of boredom every actress short of extraordinary would have induced. It's considered one of the greatest examples of acting ever recorded by a camera and possibly the definitive testament to Delphine's abilities. By now she was being referred as France's greatest actress with the same frequency Michel Piccoli was called the greatest actor. 1976 saw the the Césars replacing the "Étoiles de Cristal" and Delphine was nominated for "India Song", but she lost to Romy Schneider for her work in That Most Important Thing: Love (1975) by Andrzej Zulawski. The same year also saw her getting behind the camera as she directed Scum Manifesto (1976), a short where she read the Valerie Solanas text by the same name. She also starred in Duras' new version of "India Song", Her Venetian Name in Deserted Calcutta (1976) (where the setting was changed to the desert) and headlined the cast of Mario Monicelli's Caro Michele (1976). In 1977 she traveled to the UK to shoot an episode of BBC Play of the Month (1965). She stated her great admiration for British TV as opposed to French TV, congratulating BBC for its higher production values and for its major respect for the material it used to produce. Thinking retrospectively about the whole thing, these sentiments seem rather misplaced, since BBC erased tons of programs from existence in order to make room in the storage and for other reasons, but fortunately "The Ambassadors" wasn't part of the slaughter. Like Henry James's story, the cast featured some veritable cultural ambassadors as three different nations offered one of their most talented thespians ever: Paul Scofield represented England, Lee Remick represented United States and Delphine represented France as Madame De Vionnet. Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977) marked her final and most forgettable film collaboration with Duras. In Faces of Love (1977), she played the drug-addicted ex-wife of a director (a typically outstanding Jean-Louis Trintignant) who summons her along with two other actresses to shoot a film version of "The Three Sisters". She was again nominated for a César, but the sentimentality factor played in favor of Simone Signoret's performance in Moshé Mizrahi's award-friendly Madame Rosa (1977), which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film two months later. Mizrahi later cast both actresses in his subsequent feature, I Sent a Letter to My Love (1980), also starring Jean Rochefort. This bittersweet feature proved much better than the director's previous work: Signoret and Rochefort gave great performances, but, once again, Delphine was best in show as a naive, hare-brained woman so much different from her usual characters and gave another confirmation of her phenomenal range. She was nominated for another César in the supporting actress category, but lost to Nathalie Baye for Every Man for Himself (1980). It's ironic that, despite being considered the nation's top actress by so many people, Delphine never won a César. One theory is that she had alienated many voters (particularly the older ones) by often dismissing 50's French cinema and regularly comparing French actors unfavorably to American ones, just like many New Wave authors (Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette) had done back in the days when they worked as critics for the "Cahiérs Du Cinema" and none of them ever won a César either (or at least not a competitive one). This along with having made many enemies because of her vocally feminist attitude of course. She once stated herself that many people in France probably disliked her because she was always saying what she thought.
In the 80's, Delphine appeared in three stage plays that were later filmed: La Bête dans la Jungle (a Duras adaptation of the Henry James novel), "Letters Home" (about the poet Sylvia Plath) and "Sarah et le cri de la langouste" (where she played the legendary Sarah Bernhardt). She scored a particular success with the latter and won the "Prix Du Syndicat de la Critique" for a record third time, more than any other actress (Michel Bouquet is her male counterpart with three Best Actor wins). In 1981, she directed a feminist documentary, Sois belle et tais-toi! (1981), where she interviewed many actresses, including her friend Jane Fonda, about their role (sometimes purely decorative) in the male-dominated film industry. In 1982 she co-founded the Simone De Beauvoir audiovisual centre along with Carole Roussopoulos and Ioana Wieder. A final collaboration with Chantal Akerman, the innovative musical Golden Eighties (1986), allowed her to do what she couldn't do in "Peau d'âne" and give a very moving rendition of a beautiful song. Avant-garde German director Ulrike Ottinger provided Delphine with some unforgettable and appropriately weird roles in three of her features: multiple characters in Freak Orlando (1981), the only female incarnation of Dr.Mabuse in Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press (1984) (opposite Veruschka von Lehndorff, playing the title role 'en travesti') and Lady Windermere in Joan of Arc of Mongolia (1989). She gave a final, stunning TV performance in Une saison de feuilles (1989) as an actress suffering from Alzheimer's disease and won a 7 d'or (a French Emmy) for it. Her mature turn as a woman who's reaching the end of the line looks particularly poignant now, as it has the bitter taste of a tear-eyed farewell. A woman of extraordinary courage, Delphine had been secretly battling lung cancer (she had always been a chain smoker) for a few years, but, because of her supreme professionalism, she had never neglected a work commitment because of that. Only her closest friends knew. It became evident that there was no hope left when, in September 1990, she had do withdraw her participation from a production of Peter Shaffer's "Lettice and Lovage" with Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud's theatre company. One month later she tragically lost her battle with cancer and died in hospital, leaving an unbridgeable void in the acting world and in the lives of many. Tributes flew in torrents, with Jean-Claude Brialy hosting a particularly touching memorial where Jeanne Moreau read some very heartfelt phrases come from the pen of Marguerite Duras to honour the memory of her muse. In the decade following Delphine's death, many of her features unfortunately didn't prove to have much staying power -being so unique and destined to a very selected and elitist audience- and plenty of people began to forget about the actress. Delphine's good friend, director Jacqueline Veuve, thought this unacceptable and she saw to do something about it, shooting a documentary called Delphine Seyrig, portrait d'une comète (2000), which premiered at Locarno film festival. This partially helped to renew the actress' cult and to expand it to several other followers. Similar retrospectives at the Modern Art Museum in New York and at the La Rochelle Film Festival hopefully served the same purpose as well. One can also hope that the French Academy (Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma) would start to make amends for past sins by awarding Delphine a posthumous César: since the immortal Jean Gabin received one in 1987, who could possibly make a likelier pair with him?- Actress
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Maria Schneider was a French actress. At age 19 she became famous for Bernardo Bertolucci's film Last Tango in Paris (1972), and The Passenger (1975).
As a teenager, she adored films, going to the cinema up to four times a week. She left home at 15 after an argument with her mother and went to Paris, where she made her stage acting debut that same year.
Her film debut was an uncredited role in The Christmas Tree (1969).
In Last Tango in Paris she performed several nude scenes. After the film release she decided never to work nude again.
In early 1976, she abandoned the film set of Caligula and was replaced by Teresa Ann Savoy.
She and Brando remained friends until his death.
Schneider died of breast cancer on 3 February 2011 at age 58.- Her father was a lawyer. Her mother was an artist, a painter. She had a brother and a sister. At age 18, she married the father of her only child, actress Pascale Ogier. She divorced him two years later. To support herself, she started to work for high fashion designer Coco Chanel.
- Danièle Ciarlet, AKA Zouzou, has become one of the most revered - even though quite obscure for most - icons of the 60s Parisian scene. Discovered at age 16 by then young design artist Jean-Paul Goude, she briefly modeled for Yves Saint Laurent, and, as a tireless night-clubber, was better known, in the early 60s, under the nickname "Zouzou la twisteuse". Shortly after that, she got romantically involved with Rolling Stones member Brian Jones, whom she followed around the world. She was also a good friend of John Lennon and George Harrison and was photographed by Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton, met Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol and most of all, Jack Nicholson who remained, along with Marianne Faithfull, very... faithful friends. She also recorded two EPs as a singer at the end of the 60s, and a duet with Dani, another French 60s icon. After a few roles in underground and experimental French films (under the direction of Philippe Garrel or Yves Lagrange), she got a cinematographic breakthrough in 1972 with Eric Rohmer's L'amour l'après-midi, and developed an international career as an actress, a career which unfortunately, and progressively, slowed down because of her addiction to heroin. She spent seven years on the Cariibean Island of Saint Barthélémy to shape up, but her return to Paris, in the mid-80s, was followed by two jail incarcerations due to mild drug dealings. In the mid-90s, drug free at last, she got a fresh start solding the newspapers "La rue" and "Le réverbère" (the equivalent of British "The Big Issue") in the Parisian metro. In November 2003, the autobiography "Zouzou jusqu'à l'aube" ("Zouzou until Dawn") was released, in which she recounted with utmost honesty the extreme ups and downs of her incredible life. A compilation of all her songs was also released, and a documentary, "Zouzou l'héroïne", told in images the fate of probably one of the most beautiful woman of the world, revered as the "female Marlon Brando" when she burst into the Parisian scene.
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Bernadette Lafont was born at the Protestant Health Home of Nîmes in Gard, the only child of a pharmacist and a housewife from the Cévennes. Her mother always wanted a boy to name Bernard and, once she gave birth to a girl, she enjoyed to hold this against all the catholics she knew as the proof that their God either was blind or didn't exist. Often dressed as a boy and nicknamed Bernard, Bernadette nevertheless had a great relationship with her parents. Having spent part of her childhood in Saint-Geniès-de-Malgoirès, she returned to Nîmes where she took ballet lessons at the local Opera House. She proved to be a gifted student and she did three little tours and about twenty galas there. An extroverted girl with a fervent imagination, she used to spend her holidays at the Cévennes family mansion playing dress-up with her friend Annie, along whom she used to pretend to be an actress from an imaginary West End Club, working in Italian cinema: doing this started to win her a lot of male attention. She also began to develop a passion for film from an early age, adopting Brigitte Bardot and Marina Vlady as role models.
On the summer of 1955, the "Arènes" of Nîmes hosted a Festival of Dramatic Arts for the second time: 40 actors came from Paris while 50 regional aspiring thespians and 30 dancing students were recruited on the place. The main attraction was a production of "La Tragédie des Albigeois", a new play which featured music by Georges Delerue and starred, in the leading roles, the acclaimed stage veteran Jean Deschamps and a talented young actor called Jean-Louis Trintignant, who would go a long way from there. The play also offered bit parts to future directing genius Maurice Pialat, Trintignant's then wife Colette Dacheville (the future Stéphane Audran), and the skilled Gérard Blain, who, by then, had already appeared in a handful of movies, although usually in uncredited roles. Having seen Gérard on his way to a rehearsal at the "Arènes", Bernadette was immediately won over by his "bad boy" charm and decided to walk around the place (which had ironically been the spot of her parents' first encounter) to catch his attention: she did. Already separated from wife Estella Blain, Gérard immediately developed a great interest in Bernadette, stating that he was willing to bring her to Paris to introduce her to certain people at the Opera House and stating how glad he was that she didn't have any interest in pursuing an acting career, something he regarded, in a woman's case, as a road to perdition. After she finished her studies, Bernadette's parents gave her permission to marry Gérard and she did so in 1957.
Blain found his first relevant film role in Julien Duvivier's brilliant thriller Deadlier Than the Male (1956) and Bernadette spent a lot of time with him on the movie's set, something that made her fascination with cinema grow even bigger. The film opened to positive reviews and was also lauded (quite an oddity for a Duvivier feature) by the ruthless "Cahiers du Cinéma" critics, including the young François Truffaut, who called Blain "the French James Dean". Gérard decided to give the critic a phone call to thank him for the kind words and, after the two had a couple lunches together, Truffaut ended up making him a work offer. It's always been very hard for film critics to point at a specific work as the undisputed start of the French New Wave: for many people it's Agnès Varda's La Pointe Courte (1955) , but the director herself never wanted to be bestowed this honor and prefers to be considered a godmother to the movement. Others think that the roots of this new school of cinema can be found in the early shorts of Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard and Truffaut. The latter's The Mischief Makers (1957) is certainly one of the most significant of these ground-breaking works and happens to be the project for which Blain was recruited. Truffaut wanted to shoot the short in Nîmes and, with the exception of Gérard, he hired only non-professional actors: this included several local children and, of course, Bernadette. The mini-feature is centered around two lovers, Gérard (Blain) and Bernadette Jouve (Lafont), who are spied on by a group of children and are separated forever once he leaves for a mountain excursion from which he will never return. The character of Bernadette, a head-turner who becomes a great object of attention wherever she goes, was very much based on the real-life Lafont, just like her relationship with her beau Gérard (who has to leave Nîmes for three months, promising to marry her at his return) was very much reminiscent of her engagement to Blain. The two actors stayed at the house of Bernadette's parents for the entire shooting of the short. She chose to act in bare feet the whole time to make a homage to Ava Gardner in The Barefoot Contessa (1954) and, at the same time, a favour to Blain, not exactly a man of exceptional height. When he had married Bernadette, Gérard had sworn to himself that his new wife would have never stolen the spotlight from him like Estella had previously done: unfortunately for his plans, he was soon going to be sorely disappointed. Truffaut managed to get the best out of the young actress through rather unorthodox methods at times (like threatening to slap her hadn't she cried convincingly), but they established a great chemistry in the end and he taught her not to look at someone like Bardot as a source of inspiration, since the big star didn't possess any gift Bernadette should have been jealous of. "Les Mistons" turned out to be a little gem which already contained all the best elements of the great director's cinema. During the shooting, Bernadette got to know many other key figures of the upcoming French New Wave, including Rivette, Paul Gégauff and Claude Chabrol. The latter had already asked her to appear in his debut feature film by the time Truffaut had proposed her to star in "Les Mistons": she had accepted both offers simultaneously and, once the shooting of the short movie was over, she immediately embarked on another adventure.
Chabrol's atmospheric Le Beau Serge (1958) is now officially considered the movie that kickstarted the French New Wave: it was shot in Sardent, where the director had spent many of his childhood years. The main cast was formed by Bernadette, Gérard and another young actor called Jean-Claude Brialy, who would soon become a cornerstone of French cinema in general and an assiduous presence in New Wave movies in particular. The movie takes place in a community of drunkards and is centered around the relationship between the rebellious Serge (Blain) and his better balanced friend François (Brialy). Bernadette got the juicy role of Serge's slutty sister-in-law and lover, Marie. This role of a very impudent and provocative woman of slightly vulgar charms allowed her to introduce the French audience to a new female image that was very much different from the ones usually found in the cinema of the period and worked as a prototype to the unforgettable gallery of "bad girl" types her cinematic work will forever be strictly associated to. The movie was very much praised along with the great performances of its actors. Bernadette was immediately featured on the cover of a recent edition of "The Cahiers du Cinéma" along with Brialy. Her rise in popularity had predictably an immediate negative impact on her relationship with Blain. The two male stars of "Le Beau Serge" were paired again in Chabrol's subsequent feature, the least interesting The Cousins (1959), but, this time, the leading female role was given to an absolutely unremarkable Juliette Mayniel. Bernadette started to grow more and more bored as Gérard was away from home to shoot the movie and even tried to contact him on the set asking for a divorce.
Bernadette teamed up again with Chabrol in the director's third released feature , Web of Passion (1959), which didn't work as well as a thriller rather than as an ironic spoof on the clichés of the genre and actor piece. The film's acting laurels go undoubtedly to Bernadette as a saucy waitress, Jean-Paul Belmondo as a cheeky young man with an alcohol problem and the glorious Madeleine Robinson (rightly awarded with a Volpi Cup at Venice Film Festival) as a troubled wife and mother. By the end of the year, Bernadette had eventually divorced from Blain and gotten into a relationship with a Hungarian sculptor she had known on her 20th birthday, Diourka Medveczky. 1960 was a turning point for her, as the work she did helped cementing her status as the female face of the New Wave. L'eau à la bouche (1960) was the first and most famous feature of Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, another critic of the Cahiers who wanted to follow the same path of his colleagues turned directors and decided to call Bernadette after seeing "Le Beau Serge". The superb The Good Time Girls (1960) was Chabrol's fourth movie and remains one of his masterworks. The film follows four girls (Bernadette, Stéphane Audran, Clotilde Joano and Lucile Saint-Simon) who are bored with their lives and waiting for a positive change to arrive, whether it's the coming of true love or the fulfillment of a dream. With many scenes set in the shop where the four characters work (a surreal place where time seems to have stopped), Chabrol was able to create something that seemed to come out of Sartre, managing to perfectly spread to the viewer the sense of loneliness and boredom weighing down the girls, seemingly trapped in the antechamber of hell. One of the film's strongest assets were three performances: tragic actress Joano gave a delicate and poetic portrayal of the ill-fated Jacqueline, Italian veteran Ave Ninchi added a lot of authority to her Madame Louise and, of course, Bernadette did the usual splendid job lending her energetic screen persona to Jane, the obvious haywire of the group, but, at the same time, a character more vulnerable and less gutsy than her usual creations. The movie allowed the actress to stretch her range and gave her a lot of good memories, such as pushing journalists on a swimming pool (which is at the heart of a key scene) along with Stéphane, somehow managing to galvanize the normally extremely shy girl. To appear in the movie, Bernadette had to decline the role of prostitute Clarisse (eventually played by Michèle Mercier) in Truffaut's masterpiece Shoot the Piano Player (1960), but it was a worthy sacrifice. The same year she gave birth to her first daughter with her now husband Diourka, the future actress Élisabeth Lafont, in the same health house where she was born. Bernadette's next collaboration with Chabrol was the remarkable Wise Guys (1961), where she got her most memorable role so far as Ambroisine, a girl who gets recruited by Jean-Claude Brialy's Ronald to create trouble in an old-fashioned environment with her modern, liberated persona, but eventually becomes impossible for him to control because of her mean-spirited nature. Her anarchic side was used to full potential for the first time, something that lead to one of the best portrayals of dark lady in a New Wave movie. But, like the other characters in the film weren't ready for a new type of woman such as Ambroisine, the movie-goers of the period seemed unwilling to fall for the charms of this revolutionary type of woman Bernadette was bringing to the screen and "Les godelureaux" was a box office flop, just like "Les Bonnes Femmes" had been. The latter, now regarded as one of Chabrol's best, was also a critical disaster, although Bernadette got positive reviews for her performance. Watched today, it's clear that both movies outclass several entries from the director's most celebrated noir cycle from the late 60's to the early 70's. But considering the tepid impact that her movies used to have with the big public, Bernadette was seen just as a half-star and icon of niche cinema exclusively and her agent used to have much trouble in finding her roles at the time. Producer Carlo Ponti once offered her to come to Italy to do some movies: now that his wife Sophia Loren was moving to Hollywood (not exactly to electrifying results), he thought there was a void in Italian cinema that needed to be filled by a feisty, curvaceous actress. This proposal lead to nothing. A project with Godard never saw the light of the day. Rivette never bothered to answer a letter by Bernadette where she had asked him to cast her in his debut feature film, Paris Belongs to Us (1961). She was offered her ticket to major stardom with Jacques Demy's Lola (1961), but she had to decline the title role in the movie because she was pregnant with her second child, David. The part eventually went to the limited Anouk Aimée, who gave the best acting she could ever be capable of, but it goes without saying that, had Bernadette played the part, she would have elevated the movie to entirely new levels.
The 60s, for most of the time, didn't prove to be a very happy decade for Bernadette as she got to face both a personal and professional crisis. Immediately after "Les Godelureaux", her talents were wasted in several obscure movies and shorts. In 1962 she appeared in And Satan Calls the Turns (1962), which boosted a high-profile cast, but was scripted by Roger Vadim, something that predictably sealed the movie's fate. Although officially directed by one-shot filmmaker Grisha Dabat, the film contained all the worst elements of Vadim's cinema and Bernadette was given such a thankless role that not even she could elevate it. One year later she was without an agent and took a break from acting, also to give birth to her third daughter, the future actress Pauline Lafont. The passion between her and Diourka had cooled down by now and the main reason they stayed together for a few years more was their common love for cinema: he was indeed planning to make his directorial debut. For the time being, they tried to make it work by opting for an open marriage where both enjoyed plenty of extra-conjugal affairs. Bernadette's friends Truffaut and Chabrol couldn't really come to her rescue either. The first sent her a letter which read: "You chose life. I chose cinema. I don' think our paths will ever cross again". The second was now engaged to Audran and was soon to enter a second phase of his career, one where he regularly did films whose central female characters weren't witty, animated provincial girls, but frozen, humourless bourgeoisie ladies that were tailor-made for Stéphane. In 1964, Bernadette had a rather unhappy "rentrée" with Male Hunt (1964) , a very disappointing comedy made by the talented Édouard Molinaro on an utterly unfunny script by Michel Audiard. Her role as a prostitute was hardly one minute long, but she had little money and a ton of debts at the time, so she had to accept everything she was offered. During the decade, she found work in a few more resonant projects such as Louis Malle's The Thief of Paris (1967), Costa-Gavras's The Sleeping Car Murder (1965) and Jean Aurel's Lamiel (1967), but she was given very indifferent roles in all of them. Once again, going after unusual projects by new, alternative auteurs was the decisive factor that helped her putting her career back on track. In Diourka's remarkable first work, the short Marie et le curé (1967), she shined as a provocative young woman who seduces a priest to nefarious consequences for both. Shortly after, she appeared in the silent movie Le révélateur (1968), which was directed by her love interest of the time, Philippe Garrel, and co-starred Laurent Terzieff, opposite whom she had always dearly desired to act. The film was shot in Spain and Bernadette helped funding it thanks to a loan from Chabrol. At around the same time, she also shot the "conjoined" shorts Prologue (1970) and Piège (1970), which were written and directed by Jacques Baratier and co-starred the great Bulle Ogier. Having seen Bulle in her most acclaimed film role in Rivette's titanic achievement Mad Love (1969), Bernadette had been astonished by the actress' monstrous amount of talent and was a bit scared by the thought of having to cross blades with her. As two thieves locked in a mysterious house by a vampiresque entity, the two actresses went on to gave a great lesson in metaphysical acting. Closer to an example of visual arts or Noh theatre than a cinematic work, Barratier's double short may feel too extreme even to some New Wave purists, but is nevertheless a fascinating watch and a must-see for the fans of the two ladies, equally impressive in the acting department and perfectly suited to create the needed physical contrast, with the taller brunette adding an earthy element and the petite blonde providing an ethereal quality. Bernadette and Bulle developed a beautiful friendship which lead to several other collaborations. In 1969, Diourka made his first feature film, Paul (1969). Jean-Pierre Léaud, a cult actor if there ever was one, had loved the Hungarian sculptor's previous shorts and sent him a letter asking to work with him, so that he would add another unique title to his genial filmography. He so earned the honour to play title character in Diourka's (only) film, as a little bourgeois who escapes from his family, joins a group of sages and meets temptation in Bernadette's form. None of these works really gave the actress a major popularity boost, however. Unlike fellow female standouts of the New Wave such as Ogier, Edith Scob, Delphine Seyrig, Jeanne Moreau and Emmanuelle Riva, Bernadette didn't have theatrical roots, but this didn't prevent her from appearing in stage productions of Turgenev's "A Month in the Country" and Picasso's surrealist play "Le désir attrapé par la queue" in this period. The official start of her career renaissance came, however, at the end of the decade with Nelly Kaplan's A Very Curious Girl (1969), a retelling of sorts of Michelet's "La Sorcière". Conceived as a monument to her talents, the transgressive movie stars Bernadette as Marie, a village girl who becomes a prostitute to settle a score with society (winning male and female hearts alike) and eventually gets revenge on all her men clients. The vendetta bit had been inspired by an off-screen feud between director Kaplan (an angry feminist) and actor Michael Constantin, who had refused to recite the line 'they were very happy and didn't have children" because he was a family man and opted for a more prudish "they were very happy and had children" instead. Bernadette's fearless performance had such a huge impact that, after the film's release, she got offers to star in porn features along with obscene proposals from the more misguided moviegoers. Once again, the public had proved not to have understood what kind of woman she represented, but auteur cinema was now going to welcome her back to a fuller extent.
The 70's were definitely a more successful decade for Bernadette. She was still seen as an alternative actress and was hardly ever offered traditional roles in conventional movies, but she didn't care about it, since she felt more at home in unique experiments such as La ville-bidon (1971), Valparaiso, Valparaiso (1971) or Sex-Power (1970). Moshé Mizrahi's feminist dramedy Sophie's Ways (1971) offered her one of her best parts as the rebellious wife of an excellent Michel Duchaussoy in one of his least charming roles. Jean Renoir himself was knocked out by her performance. In 1971, Bernadette finally got to work with Rivette for the first time in the director's epic Out 1 (1971), originally conceived as an 8 part mini-series to sell to French TV. The movie is centered around 12 main characters that work as pieces of an intricate puzzle and Bernadette was teamed up with several acting heavyweights such as Michael Lonsdale, Françoise Fabian, Juliet Berto and her former co-stars Léaud and Ogier. She played the role of Lonsdale's ex-girlfriend, a writer he tries to recruit for his mysterious dancing group. The actress, unlike other cast members, wasn't used to Rivette's working method, which involved little explanations and a lot of room for improvisation. Since it took her a lot of time to adapt to this style, she was reproached by the director, who harshly accused her of having chosen not to do anything, therefore hurting her feelings. Eventually these words helped Bernadette to find a way to incorporate her "handicap" into the character, imagining that Marie was experimenting writer's block like she had found herself unable to act. A scene where she and Léaud kept just staring at each other because they didn't know what to say was kept by Rivette because he liked the authentic feeling about it. Eventually French TV never bought "Out 1". Rivette also cut it down to 4 hours in the form of Out 1: Spectre (1972), but both versions were hardly released outside of festival circuits. One year later, Bernadette got to play her best remembered and most iconic role: Camille Bliss in Truffaut's underrated black comedy A Gorgeous Girl Like Me (1972). As a girl who's released from prison so that she can be analyzed by a student of criminology, the actress got to play a role that exemplified her career (being 'one of a kind') and felt like the summation and sublimation of all the naughty ladies she had played before: of coarse manners and vulgar laughter, indomitable, unstoppable, irreverent, incandescent and more of a destructive force that she had ever been in any of her previous movies, including "Marie et le Curé" , "La fiancée du pirate" and "Les godelureaux". Her performance won her the "Triomphe du Cinéma Français" and was stellarly received in the US, with "Newsweek" and the "New York Magazine" giving it such phenomenal praise that a French journalist wrote this comment: "Bernadette Lafont, historical monument to the U.S.A.". After bringing the female type she so often personified to its definitive cinematic form, Bernadette gradually started her image makeover. The first example was in Jean Eustache's supreme masterpiece The Mother and the Whore (1973), where she would have been the logical choice to play the title "whore" Veronika, but was actually given the touching role of the title "mother" Marie. Eustache, another former critic of the Cahiers had known her for about ten years and given her the script in 1971. After reading a couple pages she had been immediately won over and realized how much she desired to do it. The director's towering 4 hour achievement is centered around a love triangle formed of Eustache's screen alter-ego Alexandre (Léaud in his very best performance), slutty nurse Veronika (non-professional actress Françoise Lebrun, whose angelic appearance provided the perfect contrast with the nature of the character) and Bernadette's Marie, Alexandre's patient girlfriend who enjoys a very open relationship with him. Managing to convey an entire era in the characters' long, sublime dialogues, Eustache easily made one of the greatest and most significant movies of the French New Wave. Bernadette's portrayal of Marie showed a vibrant, affecting sensitivity that she had hardly done before, giving further demonstration of her talent and versatility. The film was shown in competition at the 1973 Cannes film festival, where it predictably got a mixed reception: some, including Jury President Ingrid Bergman, hated it, while others worshiped it as the future of cinema. In the end, Eustache was given the Grand Prize of the Jury. The same year, Bernadette also appeared in Nadine Trintignant's Défense de savoir (1973), which was no great shakes, but also starred two of the nation's top actors, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Michel Bouquet, both of which she greatly admired. She teamed up with the two again, respectively in The Probability Factor (1976) and Vincent mit l'âne dans un pré (et s'en vint dans l'autre) (1975). She was particularly entertaining in the second as an eccentric rich lady, proving that she could be also very convincing at playing very chic and sophisticated characters. The movie ends on a high note with the actress giving an unforgettable, sexy laugh. Daughters Élisabeth and Pauline were also given roles in the movie. The final great role Bernadette played in this period was in Rivette's misunderstood masterpiece Noroît (1976): Giulia, daughter of the Sun. Centred, like many of the director's works, on the dichotomy between light and shadow and day and night, the movie sees Geraldine Chaplin's Morag ending up on a mysterious island ruled by an Amazon-like society where males are either enslaved or, like in her brother's case, murdered. A great revenge tale not without its 'steampunk' element, the film is certainly highlighted by the transforming performance of Bernadette as a ruthless, modern day Pirate queen, cutting one of her female minions' throat with one of the most frighteningly icy expressions ever recorded by a camera and eventually facing Chaplin in a climatic knife duel on the ramparts. Unfortunately, Rivette's previous feature Duelle (1976) had been so unsuccessful that "Noroît " wasn't even released and, to this day, it remains the director's least popular work, which means that many people aren't familiar with Bernadette's sinister, against type performance, which ranks with her very best and is undoubtedly one of the great villainous turns in New Wave cinema. By 1978 there had been another change of muse in Chabrol's movies, as an astounding 24 years old Isabelle Huppert headlined the cast of one of his best works, Violette (1978), the first of a series of successful collaborations which included the director's number one masterpiece, La Cérémonie (1995). Bernadette was given a brief, but memorable cameo as Violette's cellmate. This 1969-1978 period easily represents the zenith of her career. After that, it was a bit difficult for her to deal with the changing times.
By the end of the 70's, most of the New Wave auteurs had moved on to more conventional projects and French cinema was entering a far less creative phase. Bernadette's desire to constantly challenge herself and look for different, ground-breaking projects often lead her to be part of totally unremarkable movies. Her nadir was probably represented by her two collaborations with Michel Caputo, arguably the worst French director to ever work with name actors (before he exclusively moved on to do porn under several aliases): Qu'il est joli garçon l'assassin de papa (1979) and Si ma gueule vous plaît... (1981), two supposed comic works that would make Michel Audiard's comedies look like Bringing Up Baby (1938) in comparison. But, although the modern viewer can hardly believe the existence of such detrimental works, they actually weren't unusual products of their time, but clear evidence of a scary change of taste on the public's part. Actresses like Bernadette, who used to mainly work for an audience of intellectuals, had to struggle hard to keep afloat after this change of tide and, in the early 80's, she had to lend her talents to a dozen of movies that weren't worth it. The Lee Marvin vehicle Dog Day (1984) was the second occasion she found herself working with a mega-star in an international production since her cameo opposite the legendary Kirk Douglas in Dick Clement's Swinging London abomination Catch Me a Spy (1971). Although she was given a bit more to do this time around, this title didn't add anything to her filmography either. Luckily, this wasn't the case of Claude Miller's L'effrontée (1985) a.k.a. "Impudent Girl". It's very ironic -and certainly not coincidental - that a movie going by this title and starring a 14 years old Charlotte Gainsbourg as a gutsy rebel would also feature Bernadette, who had, by all means, every maternity right on this type of character which had grown more and more diffused on the French screen thanks to her work. But the film had a much different flavour from the actress' vehicles from the 60's-70's: Gainsbourg's stubborn but ultimately good-hearted Charlotte is actually nothing like "Les Godelureaux"'s Ambroisine or "Une belle fille comme moi"'s Camille Bliss and Bernadette's Léone, the new love interest of Charlotte's father and mother of an asthmatic girl, is a very likable and moving character. Having moved on to more accessible projects, Bernadette naturally started to receive more award consideration as well, and her sweet, beautiful performance in Miller's movie was honored with a Best Supporting Actress César, one of the best and most inspired choices ever in the category. Her next project was Inspector Lavardin (1986), the second and best movie centered around Jean Poiret's unconventional police inspector and her first collaboration with Chabrol since "Violette". Wearing the most recurring name of the director's heroines, Hélène, she also dyed her hair blond for the first time on his wishes, so that she would have taken a step further in changing her screen persona. She liked the idea and would keep blond hair for the rest of her life. She worked with Chabrol for a seventh (and last) time only one year later in one of the director's most gothic-like works, the underrated Masks (1987), which stars the great Philippe Noiret as a villainous TV presenter worthy of the pen of Ann Radcliffe, Christian Legagneur, who keeps an innocent Anne Brochet imprisoned in his imposing manor and wishes to kill her to get his hands on her fortune. The juicy role of Legagneur's masseuse won Bernadette a second nomination for the Supporting Actress César.
In 1988, Bernadette's life was sadly affected by a horrible personal tragedy. In August, she was spending a holiday in the Cévennes family mansion, La Serre du Pomaret, along with son David, daughter Pauline and painter Pierre De Chevilly, her new life mate. On the 11th day of the month, Pauline left the house early in the morning to have a long walk to lose weight. By midday she hadn't come back yet. The family began to worry and David started to look for her. Bernadette was unfortunately committed to appear in a TV show in Nice and she left with her heart in her throat, hoping that, in the mean time, David or Pierre would have found Pauline. That wasn't to be. The family lived many weeks in a state of anguish, using the TV show "Avis de Recherche" to diffuse some photos of Pauline in the hope that someone could have shed some light on the mystery. There were several false reports from people who claimed to have seen her and Bernadette kept fooling herself for a long time, wanting to believe that the quest would have been greeted with success. Tragically, on the 21st November, Pauline's body was found in a ravine. Her death was officially called a hiking accident, although its circumstances are still mysterious to this day and some people considered the suicide theory. Bernadette dealt with her devastating grief by throwing herself into her job: always an extremely prolific actress, she got to work more and more and, as a result, she added a lot of unremarkable titles to her resume. She would still find a few good parts in the following decades.
Between 1990 and 2013, the actress added over 70 titles to her film and TV resume. Her talents were rather wasted in Raúl Ruiz's uneven Genealogies of a Crime (1997) and in Pascal Bonitzer's delightfully cynical Nothing About Robert (1999). She shined much more as an alcoholic mother in Personne ne m'aime (1994) (where she teamed up with Ogier and Léaud once more), a former teacher who almost ends up abducting her grandchildren in Les petites vacances (2006), an antique shop dealer who still has a great ascendancy over younger men in Bazar (2009) and a family matriarch in the comedy Prête-moi ta main (2006) opposite Alain Chabat and successor Gainsbourg. Her performance in this movie won her a third nomination for the Best Supporting Actress César. Her massive body of TV work from this period was highlighted by her performances in La très excellente et divertissante histoire de François Rabelais (2010) and La femme du boulanger (2010). She also did more stage work than ever in the 2000s. Starting from 2010, she was again employed for a few projects that had a bigger impact. First she borrowed her wonderful, husky voice to a treacherous nanny in the lovely animated feature A Cat in Paris (2010), which was Oscar-nominated. This nasty lady role felt like a homage to the characters that had made her famous. The following year, Bernadette and fellow New Wave legend Emmanuelle Riva were unfortunately the latest victims of Julie Delpy's game of playing director, as they were cast in the actress' catastrophic vanity project Skylab (2011). Delpy's latest directorial feature contained all the typical elements that she thinks are enough to make a movie: a seemingly endless family reunion, characters talking about hot hair around a table and a few off-colour gags here and there. The two glorious veterans, sadistically mortified by the granny look they had to sport, did the best they could with the material they were given, but it was just too little to begin with and, consequently, they can't possibly be considered a real redeeming factor of the terribly written, lacklusterly directed and otherwise insipidly acted film. In 2012, Bernadette got her best role in years as the title character in Jérôme Enrico's black comedy Paulette (2012). Enrico's pensioner version of Breaking Bad (2008) sees Bernadette's Paulette, a penniless, xenophobic widow, finding herself in a Walter White type of situation as she gets into drug dealing to make a living and begins to smuggle hashish right under the nose of her son-in-law, a coloured cop. The actress was immediately won over by the script, finding it modern and socially significant and decided to give a strong characterization to her character. Getting inspiration from Charles Chaplin's heroes and Giulietta Masina's performance in The Road (1954), she provided Paulette with a clown side which came complete with a funny walk and her leading turn proved absolutely irresistible. The film opened to positive reviews and got more visibility outside France than Bernadette's latest vehicles and many were foreseeing another career renaissance for her. Sadly, it wasn't to be.
In early July 2013, Bernadette was on her way to her family mansion in Saint-André-de-Valborgne (Gard) when she was the victim of a stroke. Forced to stay in Grau-du-Roi for a while, she had a second one on the 22nd and was quickly moved to the University Hospital centre of Nîmes, where she tragically died three days later. Her funeral took place at the Protestant temple of Saint-André-de-Valborgne on the 29th. Her passing was a cause of great grief for an enormous number of people, as she had gradually become a huge favourite of the French audience and a cornerstone of their cinema, and her colleagues had always adored her on both a professional and personal level. The admiration she had earned through the years had been repeatedly proved by several career tributes, including an Honorary César, the title of Officer of the French Legion of Honour and medals from the "National Order of Merit" and the "Order of Arts and Letters".
Bernadette's legacy could never be extinguished, but, in addition to everything she had already bequeathed to cinema, she graced the silver screen for a last time even after her death through her final completed movie, Sylvain Chomet's Attila Marcel (2013). The movie, recently showed at Toronto film festival and released in French theatres, was greeted with positive reviews where big kudos were reserved to Bernadette's portrayal of the eccentric adoptive aunt of Guillaume Gouix's protagonist. With the film's upcoming release in many more countries, plenty of others will have the bitter honour to see her eventually taking leave. Since the 25th October 2013, the Municipal Theatre of Nîmes has been renamed the Bernadette Lafont Theatre to honour the memory of the great actress. A once unforeseeable and absolutely logical reaching point for the barefoot girl biking in the city's streets in "Les Mistons".- Actress
- Writer
- Director
Françoise Lebrun was born on 18 August 1944. She is an actress and writer, known for The Mother and the Whore (1973), Julie & Julia (2009) and Le mur des morts (2022).