Anna Karina

Anna Karina
Anna Karina in Amsterdam, 1968
Born	Hanne Karin Blarke Bayer (1940-09-22) 22 September 1940 (age 76) Solbjerg, Denmark
Occupation	actress, director, screenwriter
Years active	1959–present
Spouse(s)	Jean-Luc Godard (m. 1961; div. 1965) Pierre Fabre (m. 1968; div. 1974) Daniel Duval (m. 1978; div. 1981) Dennis Berry (m. 1982)

Anna Karina (born Hanne Karin Blarke Bayer or Beyer, sources differ; 22 September 1940) is a Danish-French film actress, director and screenwriter who has spent most of her working life in France. She is known as a muse of the director Jean-Luc Godard, one of the pioneers of the French New Wave. Her notable collaborations with Godard include The Little Soldier (1960), A Woman Is a Woman (1961), Vivre sa vie (1962), and Alphaville (1965). With A Woman Is a Woman, Karina won the Best Actress award at the Berlin Film Festival.

Karina's mother was a dress shop owner and her father was a ship's captain who left the family a year after she was born. She lived with her maternal grandparents for three years, until she was four. She spent the next four years in foster care when she returned to live with her mother. She has described her childhood as "terribly wanting to be loved", and as a child made numerous attempts to run away from home.

She began her career in Denmark, where she sang in cabarets and worked as a model playing in commercials. At age 14, she appeared in a Danish short film by Ib Schmedes, which won a prize at Cannes. She studied dance and painting in Denmark and for a while made a living selling her paintings. In 1958, after a row with her mother, she hitchhiked to Paris.

Karina was 17 when she arrived in Paris—poor and unable to speak French. Living on the streets, she got a break while sitting at the cafe Les Deux Magots. She was approached by a woman from an advertisement agency who asked her to do some photos. She became a successful fashion model, meeting Pierre Cardin and Coco Chanel. Chanel helped her devise her professional name, Anna Karina.