Jeanne Moreau
| Jeanne Moreau | |
|---|---|
Jeanne Moreau, 1957
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| Born |
23 January 1928 Paris, France |
| Occupation | Actress, screenwriter, film director |
| Years active | 1947–present |
| Spouse(s) |
Jean-Louis Richard (1949–separated 1951; divorced 1964) 1 son Jérôme Teodoro Rubanis (m.1966) William Friedkin (1977–1979) |
Jeanne Moreau (French pronunciation: [ʒan mɔʁo]; born 23 January 1928) is a French actress, singer, screenwriter and director. She won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for Seven Days... Seven Nights (1960), the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress for Viva Maria! (1965), and the César Award for Best Actress for The Old Lady Who Walked in the Sea (1992). She has also been the recipient of several lifetime awards, including a BAFTA Fellowship in 1996.
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 in 1950, and alongside Jean Gabin as a showgirl/gangster's moll in the 1954 film Touchez Pas au Grisbi. 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.
Moreau was born in Paris the daughter of Katherine (née Buckley), a dancer who performed at the Folies Bergère (d.1990), and Anatole-Désiré Moreau, a restaurateur (d.1975). Moreau's father was French; her mother was English, a native of Lancashire in England, and of part-Irish descent. Moreau's father was Catholic and her mother, originally a Protestant, converted to Catholicism upon marriage. When a young girl, "the family moved south to Vichy, spending vacations at the ancestral village of Mazirat, a town of 30 houses in a valley in the Allier. 'It was wonderful there,' Moreau said. 'Every tombstone in the cemetery was for a Moreau.'" During the war, the family was split and Moreau lived with her mother in Paris. Moreau ultimately lost interest in school at age 16 and, after attending Jean Anouilh's Antigone, found her calling as an actor. She later studied at the Conservatoire de Paris. Her parents separated permanently while Moreau was at the conservatory and her mother, "after 24 difficult years in France, returned to England with Jeanne's younger sister, Michelle."
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