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| Jeanne Moreau |
DRAGON
Jeanne Moreau
(1928 - 2017)
Legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau was known for her fearless, sensual performances in films including 'Jules et Jim,' 'The Lovers' and 'The Bride Wore Black.'
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| Jeanne Moreau |
Who Was Jeanne Moreau?
Iconic French actress Jeanne Moreau was born in Paris, France, on January 23, 1928. After an early stage career, she became one of the leading presences of the French New Wave of the 1960s, working with film directors like Louis Malle (The Lovers) and François Truffaut (Jules et Jim). More than a half-century career, she has appeared in nearly 150 movies and has become legendary for the sensual beauty and strong personality that illuminate her performances.
Iconic French actress Jeanne Moreau was born in Paris, France, on January 23, 1928. After an early stage career, she became one of the leading presences of the French New Wave of the 1960s, working with film directors like Louis Malle (The Lovers) and François Truffaut (Jules et Jim). More than a half-century career, she has appeared in nearly 150 movies and has become legendary for the sensual beauty and strong personality that illuminate her performances.
Early Life and Career in Theater
Jeanne Moreau was born on January 23, 1928, in Paris, France. Her father, Anatole-Desire Moreau was a restaurant owner. Her mother, Kathleen (née Buckley), was an English dancer who had come to Paris to perform at the Folies Bergère cabaret hall.
Moreau's parents divorced when she was 11 years old. Her mother returned to England (with Moreau's younger sister, Michelle), and her father stayed in Paris. During the German occupation of Paris in the early 1940s, Moreau was raised by her father and lived above the restaurant that he managed.
When she was 15, Moreau saw the play Antigone by Jean Anouilh and decided that she wanted to be an actress. Against her father's wishes, she attended the Conservatoire National d'Art Dramatique in Paris and made her stage debut at the Avignon Theatre Festival in 1947. By the age of 20, she was the youngest full-time member of the venerable Comédie-Française, where she performed for four years. In 1951 she moved to the Théâtre Nationale Populaire.
Jules et Jim, 1962
Jeanne Moreau was born on January 23, 1928, in Paris, France. Her father, Anatole-Desire Moreau was a restaurant owner. Her mother, Kathleen (née Buckley), was an English dancer who had come to Paris to perform at the Folies Bergère cabaret hall.
Moreau's parents divorced when she was 11 years old. Her mother returned to England (with Moreau's younger sister, Michelle), and her father stayed in Paris. During the German occupation of Paris in the early 1940s, Moreau was raised by her father and lived above the restaurant that he managed.
When she was 15, Moreau saw the play Antigone by Jean Anouilh and decided that she wanted to be an actress. Against her father's wishes, she attended the Conservatoire National d'Art Dramatique in Paris and made her stage debut at the Avignon Theatre Festival in 1947. By the age of 20, she was the youngest full-time member of the venerable Comédie-Française, where she performed for four years. In 1951 she moved to the Théâtre Nationale Populaire.
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| Jules et Jim, 1962 |
'Jules et Jim' and the French New Wave
In her 20s, Moreau began to receive small roles in minor films. She was paid $300 for her first job, a part in the 1949 film Last Love. Her breakthrough project was a role in a crime drama titled Elevator to the Gallows, directed by Louis Malle in 1957. Moreau and Malle both became major figures of the French New Wave movement. Their professional collaboration on the erotically charged drama The Lovers in 1959, as well as their personal relationship as real-life lovers, drew the attention of moviegoers and reviewers around the world.
Moreau's best-known film role may have been Catherine, the free-spirited heroine of François Truffaut's love-triangle drama Jules et Jim (1962). She collaborated again with Truffaut in 1967's The Bride Wore Black. Throughout the 1960s, she worked with many important international filmmakers who appreciated her intelligence, wit and fearless determination as well as her intense beauty. She was directed by Peter Brook in Seven Days... Seven Nights in 1960, Michaelangelo Antonioni in La Notte in 1961; Luis Buñuel in Diary of a Chambermaid in 1964; and Orson Welles in The Trial in 1962 and The Immortal Story in 1968.
In her 20s, Moreau began to receive small roles in minor films. She was paid $300 for her first job, a part in the 1949 film Last Love. Her breakthrough project was a role in a crime drama titled Elevator to the Gallows, directed by Louis Malle in 1957. Moreau and Malle both became major figures of the French New Wave movement. Their professional collaboration on the erotically charged drama The Lovers in 1959, as well as their personal relationship as real-life lovers, drew the attention of moviegoers and reviewers around the world.
Moreau's best-known film role may have been Catherine, the free-spirited heroine of François Truffaut's love-triangle drama Jules et Jim (1962). She collaborated again with Truffaut in 1967's The Bride Wore Black. Throughout the 1960s, she worked with many important international filmmakers who appreciated her intelligence, wit and fearless determination as well as her intense beauty. She was directed by Peter Brook in Seven Days... Seven Nights in 1960, Michaelangelo Antonioni in La Notte in 1961; Luis Buñuel in Diary of a Chambermaid in 1964; and Orson Welles in The Trial in 1962 and The Immortal Story in 1968.
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Mademoiselle, 1966
Later Career
Moreau continued to work throughout the 1970s, '80s and '90s, usually on European film projects rather than with Hollywood studios. (There were a few exceptions, such as her role in American director Elia Kazan's 1976 adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon). She appeared in Luc Besson's action thriller Nikita in 1990, Wim Wenders's futuristic Until the End of the World in 1991 and Antonioni's romance Beyond the Clouds, with Marcello Mastroianni, in 1995. In 2001 she portrayed French writer and director Marguerite Duras in Cet Amour-là. She has also returned to her theater career in several stage productions.
Like her contemporaries Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve, Moreau is celebrated as a legend of the French cinema. She was awarded a Golden Lion for career achievement at the Venice Film Festival in 1991 and a European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.
Jeanne Moreau
Moreau continued to work throughout the 1970s, '80s and '90s, usually on European film projects rather than with Hollywood studios. (There were a few exceptions, such as her role in American director Elia Kazan's 1976 adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon). She appeared in Luc Besson's action thriller Nikita in 1990, Wim Wenders's futuristic Until the End of the World in 1991 and Antonioni's romance Beyond the Clouds, with Marcello Mastroianni, in 1995. In 2001 she portrayed French writer and director Marguerite Duras in Cet Amour-là. She has also returned to her theater career in several stage productions.
Like her contemporaries Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve, Moreau is celebrated as a legend of the French cinema. She was awarded a Golden Lion for career achievement at the Venice Film Festival in 1991 and a European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.
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| Jeanne Moreau |
Personal Life & Death
Moreau was married to Jean-Louis Richard from 1949 to 1951. The couple have a son, Jerome. From 1977 to 1979 she was married to film director William Friedkin. Moreau has also been linked romantically with the designer Pierre Cardin, director Tony Richardson and actor Lee Marvin.
On July 31, 2017, the legendary French actress died at her home in Paris at the age of 89.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to her enduring legacy, describing Moreau as an actress who "embodied cinema" and "always rebelled against the established order.” He added: "What set her apart was she ignored what was expected of her - never letting herself be pigeon-holed as a mindless seducer or femme fatale - to embrace new styles and forms."
"I'm a passionate woman
who falls in love very easily."
Jeanne Moreau
Moreau was married to Jean-Louis Richard from 1949 to 1951. The couple have a son, Jerome. From 1977 to 1979 she was married to film director William Friedkin. Moreau has also been linked romantically with the designer Pierre Cardin, director Tony Richardson and actor Lee Marvin.
On July 31, 2017, the legendary French actress died at her home in Paris at the age of 89.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to her enduring legacy, describing Moreau as an actress who "embodied cinema" and "always rebelled against the established order.” He added: "What set her apart was she ignored what was expected of her - never letting herself be pigeon-holed as a mindless seducer or femme fatale - to embrace new styles and forms."
"I'm a passionate woman
who falls in love very easily."
Jeanne Moreau
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| Lumière, 1976 |
Jeanne Moreau, star of Jules et Jim,
dies aged 89
The legendary screen actor became synonymous with the French New Wave, appearing in works directed by Louis Malle and François Truffaut
Gwilym Mumford
Monday 31 July 2017 11.27 BST
Moreau was born in Paris in 1928. Her father was a French restaurateur; her mother was a cabaret dancer from Oldham who moved to Paris in her 20s and later performed at the Folies Bergère. In a 2001 interview with the Guardian, Moreau credited her mother’s heritage with influencing her own somewhat detached 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 [my mother tongue is French].’ But I say: ‘Ma langue maternelle est l’anglais.’ My feminine side is English,” she said.
Moreau began her acting career on stage, and became a leading figure in the Comédie-Française. In the 1950s she moved to film, and achieved national recognition with starring roles in two Louis Malle movies: the film noir Lift to the Scaffold and the drama Les Amants (The Lovers). The films proved controversial, with Les Amants becoming the subject of an obscenity case in the US supreme court, yet both are now considered landmark works. In 1960, Moreau best actress prize at Cannes for Seven Days… Seven Nights.
But it was Jules et Jim that made Moreau an international name. Directed by François Truffaut, the stylish 1962 film was set during the first world war and depicted a love triangle between Moreau’s character, Catherine, and the titular Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre). Jules et Jim has proved hugely influential, becoming synonymous with the French New Wave movement and regularly appearing on best-of lists.
Moreau almost appeared in another landmark 1960s role – Mrs Robinson in The Graduate, but turned down the part. Her career continued into her later years. In 1992, she won the César award for best actress for her performance in The Old Lady Who Walked in the Sea. She also directed two films of her own: Lumière (1976) and L’Adolescente (1979).
A notoriously difficult interviewee, Moreau responded with characteristic sharpness when asked if she ever felt nostalgic for the French New Wave. “Nostalgia for what? Nostalgia is when you want things to stay the same. I know so many people staying in the same place. And I think, my God, look at them! They’re dead before they die. That’s a terrible risk. Living is risking.”
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| Eva, 1962 |
Quotes
While I'm doing the role, I'm the part. I'm the person. But once I'm finished I'm me.
I've worked hard. I'm passionate and my world is cinema, acting, theater, creativity, art, painting, books, music, sculpture, landscapes, movements of people in the streets. Everything.
Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself.
Don't take care of yourself because you want to stop time. Do it for self-respect. It's an incredible gift, the energy of life. You don't have to be a wreck. You don't have to be sick. One's aim in life should be to die in good health. Just like a candle that burns out.
The life you had is nothing. It is the life you have that is important.
Some people are addicts. If they don't act, they don't exist.
At the beginning of my career, I was seeking something traditional, strict; just to prove to my father that being an actress is not being a whore.
I am a woman with absolutely no sense of nostalgia
While you work, while you create, you have doubts, and this is essential.
I am open to what is irrational. I open doors to intuition, because rationality is really death.
Making films is no longer a way of acting, it is a way of life.
We have so many words for states of the mind, and so few for states of the body.
Movies influence people once you get successful, and people give importance through you to the characters you do. I refused parts showing aging women getting drunk and suicidal. I know it exists, but I refuse to give that image of women; it's not my task to show the worst side of what can happen to them. I want to be an upper, not a downer.
The public sees me too much as they see me in films where I'm always playing unorthodox characters.
I decided my glass would always be half full, never half empty.
The love, suffering, and happiness I experience in life appear in my movies, become an integral part of them. When I see a film after I've made it, I see my own life before me.
I don't think success is harmful, as so many people say. Rather, I believe it indispensable to talent, if for nothing else than to increase the talent.
Everything I have I have wanted.
I've never worried about age. If you're extremely, painfully frightened of age, it shows. Life doesn't end at 30. To me age is a number, just a number. Who cares?
Age does not protect you from love, but love, to some extent, protects you from age.
I'm intelligent, but I'm not intellectual.
Every night, I go over what I did in the day, in ethical or moral terms.
Making a film is like life aboard ship, except that every day is an emergency.
I've always been ambitious, but not competitive.
I never use the word "career", it's a journalistic term. I can't separate creation from life.
To act is to move. It is that power to move that gives me real happiness.
If you don't give a damn, men look at you.
Acting is transmitting life.
I'm not measured. I'm not lukewarm. It's not always easy to live with for me.
One's soul is like a vast unexplored country.
Like every human being I have everything in me - the best and the worst.
Life is just a lot of interesting landscapes and one makes one's own geography.
When you live in terror and segregation you can't create art.
Passion is jealous. Passion goes up and down. Love is consistent. Fidelity, that's what love is about. Compassion, you give even more than you receive. That's what love is about. I'd hate to still be a victim of passion - I would think, God! I've lived all these years and I've learned nothing?
For me it's not possible to forget, and I don't understand people who, when the love is ended, can bury the other person in hatred or oblivion. For me, a man I have loved becomes a kind of brother.
You have to know cold to appreciate warmth.
Love is like the soup, the first spoonfuls are too hot, the last ones too cold.
I never come out of a film the same as I went in. Each time I discover new capacities for feelings and emotions I never knew I had.
I was never interested in existentialism, because of [Jean-Paul Sartre's] famous phrase, "Hell is the others". For me, this is a crazy idea. For me, hell is one's self.
[speaking in 1965] People who wanted to be nice about my looks always would say, "You remind me so much of Bette Davis". Very nice, except I can't stand Bette Davis.
They will write "Amant de Jules y Jim (1962)" on my gravestone when I go.
In making dinner for a friend, don't forget the love.
Life is an accomplishment. Each moment has a meaning and you must use it. Life is given to you like a flat piece of land and everything has to be done. I hope that when I'm finished, my piece of land will be a beautiful garden.
Age does not automatically bring wisdom. It might bring you knowledge, but wisdom is not a cold cream that you rub in each night and then wake up smarter in the morning.
Although for some people cinema means something superficial and glamorous, it is something else. I think it is the mirror of the world.
One should never say, "When I was young . . . "
Each time I come to New York, it's like meeting again someone I love.
Sometimes the directors were afraid of what they brought out of me. Even if they changed later when they were aging, at the time we first met - and I was usually five or six years older than they were - they wanted to know about women. I was grateful, because I wanted to know about women, too.
If I get concerned with what kind of part I would like to play, I would then start to wonder what roles would be good for me, good for my career, pleasing for the public. Life does not invite this choice and neither should films.
Lee Marvin is more male than anyone I have ever acted with. He is the greatest man's man I have ever met and that includes all the European stars I have worked with.
Whenever I have doubts about the reactions of a character, I find her a place in mythology.
When I've finished with my movie career, I may not own any snack bars, but at least I will have made the movies I wanted to make.
I always have the impression that I am in the midst of becoming. Even if it's my death that's becoming. It's in process. It's not over.
I do not think that for human beings the physical beauty is totally separated from inner beauty. Your mood shows on your face. That is something that comes from the inside. If you're in a good mood there is something different about your complexion, the light in your eyes, your mouth doesn't droop. There is energy coming out of you.
[on Luis Buñuel]: I consider him my Spanish father, and I called him that. We met simply because of box-office considerations - he didn't know what actress he wanted for Diario de una camarera (1964), and the producers offered me. We met in an apartment in St. Tropez and enjoyed so much being together that we also had dinner. He was a fantastic person.
[on Orson Welles in 1983] He transformed a town square in Spain into a Chinese marketplace. To me, that's what film is about - magic!
[on Luis Buñuel in 1983] I called him my Spanish father. He said, 'If you had been my daughter, I'd have tied you up and kept you behind bars.'
[on Joseph Losey in 1983] I love the way he films; it's very personal, very brilliant.
[on Michelangelo Antonioni in 1983] He was a whole different experience. He doesn't speak at all to he actors. We filmed at night. I couldn't understand why we should be down on the set - but the result was good.
[on Martin Ritt in 1983] That was a different experience for me. He would cover everything - closeups, medium shots, long shots, very few tracking shots. It took ages and ages to make a sequence, and I was used to working with people who did a sequence - and covered four pages - in one movement. So, I learned a new way of shooting.
[on Rainer Werner Fassbinder in a 1984 interview] It was his ex-wife that told me he wanted me to be in the film. The picture was done in 24 days. Immediately, when I was on the set, I could feel his willpower. He was perfect in terms of creativity!
[on Peter Brook in a 1983 interview] His approach is sometimes quite frightening because he reaches that part of you he wants to be sensitive - and it opens up incredible things.
[on Jean-Luc Godard in a 1983 interview] I asked for him as the director of "Eva." He signed the contract and was paid some money; he was supposed to deliver a first draft in four weeks time. He eventually sent it - in a one page letter! The producers screamed, 'Where did you get that crazy bum?' So, then I recommended Joe Losey
[on Burt Lancaster after filming El tren (1964)] Before he can pick up an ashtray, he discusses the motivation for an hour or two. You want to say just pick up the ashtray and shut up! (In 1983 Moreau thinks her remarks were unfair to Lancaster.)
[on Roger Vadim in a 1983 interview] He's very charming, but he was very nervous on the set because co-star Ferard Philipe (who died soon afterwards) was very ill.
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