Jeanne Moreau

Jeanne Moreau (23 January 1928 – 31 July 2017) was a French actress particularly associated with the French "new wave" cinema.

Life and career

Moreau was born in Paris, France, the daughter of an English mother, a dancer at the Folies Bergères, and a French father, a restaurateur. She studied at the Conservatoire de Paris.

She began her career as a stage actress and joined the celebrated "Comédie-Française" in 1948, aged only 20, one the youngest ever member of the company. During the same time, she was in small roles in movies.

She got her first major break when she met French director Louis Malle.  He cast her in his movies L'ascenceur pour l'échafaud (1957) and Les amants (1958), which established her as a movie star in France. She also appeared in Roger Vadim's Les liaisons dangereuses (1959) and Peter Brooks's Moderato cantabile (1960), but it is with François Truffaut's iconic movie Jules et Jim (1961) that she became an international star.

She then went on to work with directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni (La Notte), Orson Welles (Le procès), Luis Bunuel (The Diary of a Chambermaid), etc. In the 1970s, she attempted directing with Lumières (1976) and L'adolescente (1979) with mixed success.

Moreau received many awards for best actress, including a César Award, a BAFTA, a prix d'interprétation at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1996 she received a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, a lifetime achievement award.

Moreau died on 31 July 2017 in Paris at the age of 89.

Sources

 The Illustrated Who's Who of the Cinema, Lloyd, Weber & Dessler, Portland House, 1987.

Other websites

Category:1928 births
Category:2017 deaths
Category:French movie actors
Category:French movie directors
Category:French movie producers
Category:French screenwriters
Category:French television actors
Category:Actors from Paris