Jeanne Moreau (French ; born 23 January, 1928) is a BAFTA Awards-winning French actress, screenwriter and director.

Biography

Early life

Moreau was born in Paris, the daughter of Katherine (née Buckley), a dancer who performed at the Folies Bergère, and Anatole-Désiré Moreau, a restaurateur. Moreau's father was French and her mother was English, a native of Lancashire, England and of part Irish descent. Moreau's father was Catholic and her mother, originally a Protestant, converted to Catholicism upon marriage. Moreau studied at the Conservatoire de Paris.

Career

In 1947, she made her theatre debut at the Avignon Festival. By her twenties, Moreau was already one of leading stage actresses at the Comédie-Française. After 1951, she began appearing in films with small parts. By the late 1950s, after making many mainstream films, including several successes, she starred in Elevator to the Gallows (1958) with first-time director Louis Malle. Largely thanks to that film, she went on to work with many of the best known New Wave and avant garde directors. After her sexy role in The Lovers (Les Amants, 1959), the media tagged her as "The New Bardot".

François Truffaut's explosive New Wave film Jules et Jim (1962), her biggest international success to date, is centred on her magnetic starring role, and is perhaps her most famous film. She has also appeared with a number of other notable directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni (La notte and Beyond the Clouds), Jean-Luc Godard (A Woman Is a Woman), Orson Welles (The Immortal Story), Luis Buñuel (Diary of a Chambermaid), Elia Kazan (The Last Tycoon), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Querelle), and Wim Wenders (Until the End of the World).

Moreau has enjoyed success as a vocalist. She has released several albums and once performed with Frank Sinatra at Carnegie Hall. In addition to acting, Moreau has also worked behind the camera, as a writer, director and producer.

Personal life

Throughout her life, she has maintained friendships with prominent writers such as Jean Cocteau, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, and Marguerite Duras (an interview with Moreau is included in Duras's book Outside: Selected Writings).

She is a close friend of Sharon Stone, who presented a 1998 American Academy of Motion Pictures life tribute to Moreau. Orson Welles called her "the greatest actress in the world", and to this day she remains one of France's most accomplished actresses.

Filmography

Actor

• Touchez pas au grisbi (1954) by Jacques Becker
• La Reine Margot (1954)
• Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958) by Louis Malle
• The Lovers (Les amants) (1958) by Louis Malle
• Les liaisons dangereuses (1959) by Roger Vadim
• The Four Hundred Blows (1959) (bit part) by François Truffaut
• Le Dialogue des Carmélites (1960) by Philippe Agostini
• A Woman Is a Woman (1961) by Jean-Luc Godard (Uncredited cameo, discussing Jules et Jim)
• La notte (1961) by Michelangelo Antonioni
• The Trial (1962) by Orson Welles
• Jules et Jim (1962) by François Truffaut
• Eva (1962) by Joseph Losey
• The Victors (1963)
• The Fire Within (Le feu follet) (1963) by Louis Malle
• Bay of Angels (1963) by Jacques Demy
• Diary of a Chambermaid (1964) by Luis Buñuel
• The Train (1964) by John Frankenheimer
• The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964) by Anthony Asquith
• Mata-Hari (1964) by Jean-Louis Richard
• Viva Maria! (1965) by Louis Malle
• Mademoiselle (1966) by Tony Richardson
• The Immortal Story (1968) by Orson Welles
• The Bride Wore Black (1968) by François Truffaut
• The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir (1970) by Jean Renoir
• Monte Walsh (1970)
• Nathalie Granger (1972) by Marguerite Duras
• Les Valseuses (1974) by Bertrand Blier
• Joanna Francesa (1975) by Cacá Diegues
• The Last Tycoon (1976) by Elia Kazan
• Monsieur Klein (1976) by Joseph Losey
• Querelle (1982) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
• La Truite (1982) by Joseph Losey
• Nikita (1990) by Luc Besson
• The Old Lady Who Walked in the Sea (1991)
• Until the End of the World (1991) by Wim Wenders
• A Foreign Field (1993) by Charles Sturridge
• Beyond the Clouds (1995) - Michelangelo Antonioni
• The Proprietor (1996) - Merchant Ivory Film
• I Love You, I Love You Not (1996)
• Ever After (1998)
• Cet amour-là (2001) as Marguerite Duras
• Love Actually (2003) cameo as woman at Marseilles Airport
• Time to Leave (2005) by François Ozon
• Roméo et Juliette (2006)
• Désengagement (2007)

Director

• Lumière (1976)
• L'Adolescente (1979)
• Lillian Gish (1983, TV documentary)

References

External links