page_title: Anouk Aimée
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Anouk Aimée / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Publicity photo of Anouk Aimee for film 8 1/2 (Italian title: Otto e mezzo) (1963).
context_page_description: Nicole Françoise Florence Dreyfus, known professionally as Anouk Aimée or Anouk, is a French film actress, who has appeared in 70 films since 1947, having begun her film career at age 14. In her early years she studied acting and dance besides her regular education. Although the majority of her films were French, she also made a number of films in Spain, Great Britain, Italy and Germany, along with some American productions.
  Among her films are Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, after which she was considered a "rising star who exploded" onto the film world. She subsequently acted in Fellini's 8½, Jacques Demy's Lola, George Cukor's Justine, Bernardo Bertolucci's Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man and Robert Altman's Prêt à Porter. She won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her acting in A Man and a Woman. The film "virtually reignited the lush on-screen romance in an era of skeptical modernism," and brought her international fame.
  She won the Award for Best Actress at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival for Marco Bellocchio's film A Leap in the Dark.
context_section_description: Aimée (then still Françoise Dreyfus) made her film debut in 1946, at the age of fourteen, in the role of "Anouk" in La Maison sous la mer, and she kept the name afterwards. Jacques Prévert, while writing Les amants de Vérone (The Lovers of Verona, 1949) specifically for her, suggested she take the symbolic last name Aimée, "that would forever associate her with the affective power of her screen roles." In French, it means "beloved."
  Among her notable films were Alexandre Astruc's Le Rideau Cramoisi (The Crimson Curtain, 1952), Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960), Fellini's 8½ (1963), Jacques Demy's Lola (1961), André Delvaux's Un Soir, un Train (One Evening, One Train, 1968), George Cukor's Justine (1969), Bernardo Bertolucci's Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981), Robert Altman's Prêt à Porter (Ready to Wear, 1994) and, Claude Lelouch's Un Homme et une femme (A Man and a Woman, 1966) — described as a "film that virtually reignited the lush on-screen romance in an era of skeptical modernism." Words like "regal," "intelligent" and "enigmatic" are frequently associated with her, notes one author, giving Aimée "an aura of disturbing and mysterious beauty" that has earned her the status of "one of the hundred sexiest stars in film history," according to a 1995 poll conducted by Empire Magazine.
  Because of her "striking features" and her beauty, she has been compared to Jacqueline Kennedy. Film historian Ginette Vincendeau notes that Aimée's films "established her as an ethereal, sensitive and fragile beauty with a tendency to tragic destinies or restrained suffering."
  Her abilities as an actress and the photogenic qualities of her face, its "fine lines, expression of elation and a suggestive gaze," helped her achieve success in her early films. In 1947 Émile Savitry made a widely-published early portrait of her at 15, holding a kitten on the set of Carné's La Fleur de l'âge. Among others of her films of this period were Pot-Bouille (1957), Les Amants de Montparnasse (Montparnasse 19) (The Lovers of Montparnasse, (1958) and La tête contre les murs (Head Against the Wall, 1958).
  Besides the French cinema, Aimée's career include a number of films made in Spain, Great Britain, Italy and Germany. She achieved worldwide attention in Fellini's La Dolce Vita (the Good Life, 1960) and Lola (1961). She appeared again in Fellini's 8​¹⁄₂, and would remain in Italy during the first half of the 1960s, making films for a number of Italian directors. Because of her role in La Dolce Vita, biographer Dave Thompson describes Aimée as a "rising star who exploded" onto the film world. He adds that singer-songwriter Patti Smith, who in her teens saw the film, began to idolise her, and "dreamed of being an actress like Aimée."
  Aimée's  greatest success came in 1966 with the film Un homme et une femme (A Man and a Woman,) directed by little known Claude Lelouch. Primarily due to the excellent acting by its stars, Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant, the film became an international success, winning both the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1966 and an Oscar. Tabery states that with her "subtle portrayal of the heroine—self-protective, then succumbing to a new love—Aimée seemed to create a new kind of femme fatale. . ."
  Film historian Jurgen Muller adds, "whether one like the film or not, it's still hard for anyone to resist the melancholy aura of Anouk Aimée." In many of her subsequent films, she would continue to play that type of role, "a woman of sensitivity whose emotions are often kept secret."
  In 1969 she starred in the American film production of Justine, costarring Dirk Bogarde and directed by George Cukor and Joseph Strick. The film contained some nudity, with one writer observing, "Anouk is always impeccable, oozing the sexy, detached air of the elite . . . when she drops these trappings, along with her couture clothing, Anouk's naked perfection will annihilate you."
  
  Photojournalist Eve Arnold, assigned to photograph and write a story about Aimée and her role, spoke to Dirk Bogarde, who had known her since she was fifteen. He sa
caption: Anouk Aimée in 8½, 1963
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