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Name: Jeanne Moreau
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Date of Birth:
January 23, 1928
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Place of Birth:
Paris, France
Mini-bio:
One of the most recognizable faces of the French cinema, and also one of its most celebrated, Jeanne Moreau is a legend in her own right. Combining off-kilter beauty with strong character, Moreau came... read more to embody forthright, devil-may-care sensuality in such films as Jules and Jim and The Bride Wore Black. Comparing her to some of her best-known colleagues, Ginette Vincendeau noted, "Where Brigitte Bardot was sex and Catherine Deneuve elegance, Moreau incarnated intellectual femininity."Born in Paris on January 23, 1928, Moreau was the daughter of an English dancer and a French barman who divorced when she was eleven. Growing up in Nazi-occupied Paris, she began to discover her love of literature and the theatre, and, opposing her father's wishes, she decided to become an actress. While still a student at the Paris Conservatoire, Moreau made her stage debut at the 1947 Avignon Theatre Festival. Shortly thereafter, she was invited to join the prestigious Comédie-Française, becoming on her twentieth birthday the youngest full-time member in the company's history. She stayed with the company for four years, appearing in almost all of their productions during that time. She left in 1951, finding it too restrictive and authoritarian, and joined the more experimental Théâtre Nationale Populaire.During this time, Moreau began to take bit parts in various films, particularly B-movie melodramas. Initially not considered attractive enough to be a movie star--thanks in part to her lack of interest in make-up--she was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of a director who found her natural attributes to be just what he was looking for: Louis Malle, who directed the actress in her breakthrough film, the New Wave murder mystery Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows) (1957). Following this film, Moreau remained Malle's favorite actress and off-screen lover for the next several years. The pair made headlines with their 1959 collaboration, Les Amants (The Lovers); the steamy tale of a bored housewife's extramarital affair pushed the boundaries of censorship on its U.S. release and led certain American gossip columnists to tag Moreau "the new Bardot." The actress' biggest international success was as the exuberant, free-spirited heroine of François Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1962); five years later, she worked again with Truffaut, starring as an icy murderess in the popular Hitchcock homage The Bride Wore Black (1967). Throughout the 1960s, Moreau worked with some of the cinema's most notable directors, collaborating with Peter Brooks on the 1960 Moderato Cantabile (for which she won a Best Female Performance award at the Cannes Film Festival), Michelangelo Antonioni on La Notte (1961), and Luis Buñuel on Le Journal d'une Femme de Chambre. Throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, Moreau continued to work regularly, largely forgoing Hollywood fare in favor of European films. She made some of her more notable appearances in Bertrand Blier's Les Valseuses (1974), Luc Besson's La femme Nikita (1990), and Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World (1991). She also played minor but pivotal roles in The Lover (1992), to which she lent her sandpaper-and-whisky voice as the narrator; Antonioni's Beyond the Clouds (1995), in which she appeared with Marcello Mastroianni in one of his last roles; and Ever After (1998), one of her few Hollywood outings. Linked romantically with dozens of high-profile men over the decades, Moreau was for a brief period married to Exorcist director William Friedkin. In addition to her acting pursuits, Moreau put her talents to use behind the camera, directing Lumière (1976) and L'adolescente (1979). She has also served twice as the president of the Cannes FIlm Festival jury (1975 and 1995) and has won a number of honors, including a Golden Lion for career achievement at the 1991 Venice Film Festival and a 1997 European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi
Jeanne Moreau mini-bio: When people gave Louis Malle credit for making a star of Jeanne Moreau in
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958) immediately followed by Amants, Les (1958),
he would point out that Moreau by that time had already been "recognized as
the prime stage actress of her generation." She had made it to the Comédie
Française in her 20s. She had appeared in B-movie thrillers with Jean Gabin
and Ascenseur was in that genre. The technicians at the film lab went to the
producer after seeing the first week of dailies for Ascenseur and said: "You
must not let Malle destroy Jeanne Moreau". Malle explained: "She was lit
only by the windows of the Champs Elysées. That had never been done.
Cameramen would have forced her to wear a lot of make-up and they would put
a lot of light on her, because, supposedly, her face was not photogenic".
This lack of artifice revealed Moreau's "essential qualities: she could be
almost ugly and then ten seconds later she would turn her face and would be
incredibly attractive. But she would be herself".
Moreau has told interviewers that the characters she played were not her.
But even the most famous film critic of his generation, Roger Ebert, thinks
that she is a lot like her most enduring role, Catherine in François
Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1962). Behind those eyes and that enigmatic smile
is a woman with a mind. In a review of Clothes in the Wardrobe (1993) (TV)
Ebert wrote: "Jeanne Moreau has been a treasure of the movies for 35
years... Here, playing a flamboyant woman who nevertheless keeps her real
thoughts closely guarded, she brings about a final scene of poetic justice
as perfect as it is unexpected".
Moreau made her debut as a director in Lumière (1976) -- also writing the
script and playing Sarah, an actress the same age as Moreau whose romances
are often with directors for the duration of making a film. She made several
films with Malle.
Still active in international cinema, Moreau presided over the jury of the
1995 Cannes Film Festival.
