Moreau, Jeanne

Moreau, Jeanne môrōˈ [key], 1928–2017, French movie actress, b. Paris, studied Conservatoire National d'Art Dramatique. She joined the Comédie Française and was a successful stage actress before she entered films, but she is known for working with many of the finest directors in the French New Wave cinema of the mid-20th cent. and for her sophisticated portrayals of amoral heroines. In François Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1961), her best-known film and the work that made her an international star, she etched a highly ambiguous portrait of a delightful, impetuous woman who is involved in a complicated ménage á trois and destroys the men who love her. Her other films include Louis Malle's The Lovers (1959), which first brought her to public and critical attention, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1960), Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte (1961), Luis Buñuel's Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), The Bride Wore Black (1968), Going Places (1974), The Trout (1982), La Femme Nikita (1990), and The Summer House (1993). She also made a few Hollywood films, including The Train (1964) and The Last Tycoon (1976). In 1976, she directed her first feature, Lumière. She continued to work in French film and television into the 2010s.

See biography by M. Gray (1994).

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