Jeanne Moreau Dies: Legendary French Actress, Star Of ‘Jules & Jim’ Was 89
She was not on the list.
A leading screen presence for more than 60 years, and a
member of the Nouvelle Vague, legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau has died.
She passed away overnight at her home in Paris at age 89. The mayor’s office of
the city’s 17th arrondissement confirmed the news to Deadline.
The gravelly-voiced, multi-award winner was a fixture of
French cinema with roles in such classic films as Louis Malle’s 1958 Ascenseur
Pour L’Echafaud (Elevator To The Gallows) and Les Amants (The Lovers), and
François Truffaut’s 1962 love triangle Jules And Jim in which she sang the
emblematic “Le Tourbillon.” Other collaborations were with such directors as
Orson Welles, Joseph Losey, Michelangelo Antonioni, Luis Bunuel, Elia Kazan and
Wim Wenders.
Moreau was born in Paris on January 23, 1928 and got her
start on the stage. Her first film role was in 1949’s Last Love before the role
that changed her career as a criminal lover in Malle’s 1958 noir, Elevator To
The Gallows. In the 60s, along with Jules And Jim, she appeared in several
international movies including Antonioni’s La Notte; Welles’ The Trial, The
Immortal Story and Chimes At Midnight; Losey’s Eva, Tony Richardson’s Mademoiselle
and Bunuel’s Diary Of A Chambermaid.
Her father was a French restaurateur and her mother a
cabaret dancer from Oldham, England. In a 2001 interview with The Guardian,
Moreau said it was her mother’s background that influenced her personality.
“People in France could see I was different from the usual actresses of that
time. Maybe that’s why I attracted so many Anglo-Saxon directors like Orson
Welles and Tony Richardson. In French, one says ‘Ma langue maternelle est le
français.’ But I say ‘Ma langue maternelle est l’anglais.’ My feminine side is
English.”
In 1974, she appeared with Gérard Depardieu, Miou-Miou and
Patrick Dewaere in Bertrand Blier’s sexually explicit and controversial Les
Valseuses. With Kazan in 1975, Moreau made The Last Tycoon with Robert De Niro,
Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Jack Nicholson and Donald Pleasence. She further
reteamed with Losey in the 70s and 80s for Monsieur Klein and The Trout.
In Luc Besson’s 1990 La Femme Nikita, Moreau was a trainer
to Anne Parillaud’s assassin. The next year, she appeared in Wenders’ sci-fi
drama Until The End Of The World. More recent work included a brief role in
1998 Fox fairy tale Ever After with Drew Barrymore; François Ozon’s 2005 Time
To Leave; and Manoel de Oliveira’s Gebo And The Shadow in 2012.
Directing credits include 1979 drama The Adolescent which
she co-scripted, and the same year’s Lumière which she also wrote.
In all, Moreau made over 130 films and continued to work
into her 80s. Awards she accumulated include a 1958 Best Actress prize at the
Venice Film Festival for Les Amants; the 1960 Cannes Best Actress trophy for
Peter Brook’s Seven Days… Seven Nights (Moderato Cantabile); a 1967 BAFTA for
Malle’s Viva Maria! as Best Foreign Actress; and the Best Actress César for
1991’s The Old Lady Who Walked Into The Sea.
Lifetime Achievement honors have been bestowed by the
Césars; the Cannes, Berlin and Venice Film Festivals; and the BAFTAs. In 1998,
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences paid tribute to her
then-50-year-old career.
She is the only woman to have served twice as the president
of the Cannes Film Festival jury, in 1975 and 1995, and was a regular at the
Riviera event. On a personal note, she was also a sometime regular in my early
days in Paris — we belonged to the same video club in the 7th arrondissement
and I would run into her renting films. It was, at the time, the only reliable
place to get subtitled, rather than dubbed, versions of movies and TV shows
and, as testament to just how international a lady she was, she preferred being
able to see things in their original versions.
The Elysées Palace released a statement that reads in part:
“There are personalities who alone seem to sum up their art.
Jeanne Moreau was one of them. With her disappears an artist who embodied
cinema in its complexity, its memory, its exigency.”
The Venice Film Festival sent a “heartfelt salute
