Jeanne Moreau
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
After 1951 she began appearing in films with small or "bit" parts. By the late 1950s, after making many mainstream films, including several successes, she made Elevator to the Gallows 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 1959's sexy "Les Amants" (The Lovers) the media tagged her as "The New Bardot". François Truffaut's explosive New Wave film Jules et Jim (1962), her biggest international success, is centered 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). |
Related e |
Featured: |
Jeanne Moreau (23 January 1928 – 31 July 2017) was a French actress, singer, screenwriter and director.
Moreau made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française. She began playing small roles in films in 1949, impressing in a Fernandel vehicle Meurtres? (Three Sinners, 1950), and alongside Jean Gabin as a showgirl/gangster's moll in the film Touchez pas au grisbi (1954). She achieved prominence as the star of Elevator to the Gallows (1958), directed by Louis Malle, and Jules et Jim (1962), directed by François Truffaut. Most prolific during the 1960s, Moreau continued to appear in films into her eighties.
Selected filmography
Actress
Director
- Lumière (1976)
- L'Adolescente (1979)
- Lillian Gish (1983, TV documentary)