French film legend Jeanne Moreau dies
FRENCH actress Jeanne Moreau, who lit up the screen in Jules et Jim and starred in some of the most critically acclaimed films of the 20th century, has died. She was 89.
The gravel-voiced actress epitomised the freedoms of the 1960s and brought daring, depth and danger to a string of cinematic masterpieces from Louis Malle’s Lift to the Scaffold to Jacques Demy’s Bay of Angels.
Moreau, who was still making films at 87, was found dead at her home in Paris early yesterday, the district’s mayor said.
Once described by US director Orson Welles as “the best actress in the world”, she was a feminist icon and trailblazer for liberated women, as well as the face of French New Wave.
“Physical beauty is a disgrace,” she once said in her characteristic rasp, redolent with the strong French cigarettes she smoked. Yet that did not stop her becoming the thinking man’s femme fatale, with film scholar David Shipman calling her “the arthouse love goddess”. Leading tributes to the plain-speaking actress, French President Emmanuel Macron said Moreau had “embodied cinema” and was a free spirit who “always rebelled against the established order”.
Fellow French screen legend Brigitte Bardot said: “Jeanne was a beautiful, intelligent, hugely seductive woman with a voice and a personality that made her an actress with so many sides. I am very sad today.” Ex-culture minister Jack Lang said: “She came into a tightly corseted society and showed a whole generation of women the path to emancipation.”
It was that sparky rebel spirit that brought some of the world’s greatest directors to her door.