French New Wave actress Jeanne Moreau dies at 89

Paris — French actress Jeanne Moreau, the smoky-voiced femme fatale of the French New Wave who starred in Francois Truffaut’s love triangle film “Jules and Jim” and worked with many other acclaimed directors during a decades-long career, has died at 89.

Outspoken, provocative and acting well into her 80s, Moreau was among France’s most-recognized performers. President Emmanuel Macron celebrated Moreau for going beyond earlier roles as a screen siren to embrace other genres, starring in comedies and action films.

“That was her freedom ... always rebellious against the established order,” Macron said in a statement. “(She had) a spark in her eye that defied reverence and was an invitation to insolence, to liberty, to this whirlpool of life that she loved so much. And that she made us love.”

The president’s office and Moreau’s agent announced her death Monday without providing a cause.

Starting in the early 1960s, Moreau was the most prominent actress of the French New Wave, with her brooding, downturned mouth and distinctive blend of sensuality, intellect and resolve. Her performance as Catherine in Truffaut’s 1962 “Jules and Jim,” in which she played the love interest in a groundbreaking romance about two friends vying for the same woman, was among her most well-known.

She also worked with Truffaut on the Hitchcock-inspired thriller “The Bride Wore Black.”

AP PHOTO/FILE Undated file photo of French actress Jeanne Moreau and actor Jean-Paul Belmondo. Moreau, whose seven-decade career included work with Francois Truffaut, Orson Welles, Wim Wenders and other acclaimed directors, has died at 89. Her death was announced...