Jeanne Moreau (French:[ʒanmɔʁo]; 23 January 1928 – 31 July 2017) was a French actress, singer, screenwriter, director, and socialite. She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française.
Moreau worked as a director on several films beginning with 1976's Lumière. She continued to act into the 2010s, winning the César Award for Best Actress for The Old Lady Who Walked in the Sea (1992) and receiving several lifetime achievement awards, including a BAFTA Fellowship in 1996, a Cannes Golden Palm in 2003, and another César Award in 2008. Her collaborator and friend Orson Welles called her "the greatest actress in the world".[1][2][3]
Early life and education
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).[4][5] Moreau's father was French; her mother was English, a native of Oldham, Lancashire, England[2] and of part Irish descent.[5][6][7] Moreau's father was Catholic and her mother, originally a Protestant, converted to Catholicism upon marriage.[5] When Jeanne was a young girl, "the family moved south to Vichy, spending vacations at the paternal 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 World War II, the family was split, and Moreau lived with her mother in Paris. Moreau ultimately lost interest in school and, at age 16, after attending a performance of 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[8] sister, Michelle."[8]
Career
Moreau in 2000
In 1947, Moreau made her theatrical debut at the Avignon Festival. She debuted at the Comédie-Française in Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country[8] and, by her 20s, was already one of the leading actresses in the theatre's troupe.[5] After 1949, she began appearing in films with small parts but continued primarily active in the theatre for several years — a year at the Théâtre National Populaire opposite among others Gérard Philipe and Robert Hirsch, then a breakout two years in dual roles in The Dazzling Hour by Anna Bonacci, then Jean Cocteau's La Machine Infernale and others before another two-year run, this time in Shaw's Pygmalion.[8] From the late 1950s, after appearing in several successful films, she began to work with the emerging generation of French film-makers. Elevator to the Gallows (1958) with first-time director Louis Malle was followed by Malle's The Lovers (Les Amants, 1959).[9]
Moreau was also a vocalist. She released several albums and once performed with Frank Sinatra at Carnegie Hall in 1984.[5] In addition to acting, Moreau worked behind the camera as a writer, director and producer.[5] Her accomplishments were a subject in the film Calling the Shots (1988) by Janis Cole and Holly Dale.[12] She appeared in Rosa von Praunheim's film Fassbinder's Women (2000).
In 1971, Jeanne Moreau was a signatory of the Manifesto of the 343 which publicly announced that she had obtained an illegal abortion.[17]
Moreau was a close friend of Sharon Stone, who presented a 1998 American Academy of Motion Pictures life tribute to Moreau at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, academy headquarters, in Beverly Hills. Orson Welles called Moreau "the greatest actress in the world",[1][2][3] and she remained one of France's most accomplished actresses.
In 2009, Moreau signed a petition in support of director Roman Polanski, who had been detained while traveling to a film festival in relation to his 1977 sexual abuse charges, which the petition argued would undermine the tradition of film festivals as a place for works to be shown "freely and safely", and that arresting filmmakers traveling to neutral countries could open the door "for actions of which no-one can know the effects".[18][19]
Moreau died on 31 July 2017 at her home in Paris at the age of 89.[3] Her body was discovered by her cleaning maid. Shortly before her death, she had said she felt "abandoned" because she could not act anymore.[20][21]
↑Roubanis was previously the companion of Henry Plumer McIlhenny. The relationship with McIlhenny was cited in Welsh and Tibbett's The Cinema of Tony Richardson (SUNY Press, 1999). Roubanis later married Lady Sarah Churchill. Lady Sarah Spencer-Churchill obituary, The Telegraph, 19 October 2000.
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