Actress Anouk Aimée, the subtle French magnificence who graced the movies of Federico Fellini, Jacques Demy, Sidney Lumet, Bernardo Bertolucci and Claude Lelouch, has died. She was 92.
Aimee’s daughter mentioned in an Instagram put up on Tuesday that the star died at her dwelling in Paris with out offering additional particulars.
Maybe finest recognized for her position reverse Jean-Louis Trintignant in Lelouch’s A Man and a Girl (1966) — for which she obtained an Oscar nomination for finest actress and received a Golden Globe — Aimée additionally starred in such artwork home standouts as Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 1/2 (1963), Demy’s Lola (1961), Jacques Becker’s Montparnasse 19 (1958) and Bertolucci’s Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981).
Her profession kicked off within the late Nineteen Forties and lasted during a reunion with Trintignant in The Greatest Years (Les Plus belles annees), Lelouch’s 2019 epilogue to A Man and a Girl.
With greater than 80 function credit, she additionally sparkled in Robert Altman‘s send-up of the style world, Able to Put on (1994); Marceline Loridan-Ivens’ The Birch-Tree Meadow (2003), through which she performed a Holocaust survivor who returns to Auschwitz 60 years after the warfare; and Yvan Attal’s … And They Lived Fortunately Ever After (2004).
In a 2007 interview, the elegant Aimée revealed her secret of appearing to The Guardian: “It was Fellini who taught me this: Crucial factor of all is to pay attention, simply take heed to what the opposite characters say. And don’t take [yourself] too severely.”
Born in Paris on April 27, 1932, Aimée, whose actual identify was Judith Dreyfus — although some official paperwork listing her first identify as Nicole — was the daughter of actor Henri Dreyfus (stage identify: Henry Murray) and actress Genevieve Sorya (nee Durand).
Throughout World Battle II, she took her mom’s maiden identify to keep away from Nazi persecution, transferring between Paris and the south of France. She attended boarding faculty within the Alps and crossed paths with a younger Roger Vadim, future director of And God Created Ladies.
When she was 14, Aimée was noticed by movie director Henri Calef, who forged her for the a part of Anouk in his 1947 romantic drama La maison sous la mer. The actress determined to maintain that as her skilled identify, including “Aimee” (which suggests “liked” in French) on the suggestion of creator Jacques Prevert, whom she met whereas taking pictures Marcel Carne’s unfinished teen saga La fleur de l’age.
At 16, she starred in The Lovers of Verona (1949), Andre Cayette’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.
Through the subsequent twenty years, the enigmatic Aimée would star in additional than 40 movies, making a reputation for herself in French options like Alexandre Astruc’s drama Dangerous Liaisons (1955) — an inspiration for the auteurs of the French New Wave — and Montparnasse 19, Jacques Becker’s portrait of the early twentieth century Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani.
In 1960, Fellini forged Aimée in his masterpiece La Dolce Vita, through which she performed the rich heiress Maddalena, certainly one of Marcello Mastroianni’s love pursuits. The 2 would work collectively once more three years later in Fellini’s autobiographical basic 8 1/2, the place she portrayed Mastroianni’s spurned spouse, Luisa. (The character was primarily based on Fellini’s actual spouse, actress Giulietta Masina.)
When recalling her work with Fellini for Paris Match, Aimée mentioned, “I found laughter and the joie de vivre, and I discovered to like my job as an actress.”
After 8 1/2, Aimée moved to Italy for a spell and made a number of motion pictures there, together with Marco Bellocchio’s drama A Leap within the Darkish (1980), for which she obtained finest actress honors in Cannes.
She additionally starred in Lumet’s Rome-set psychological thriller The Appointment (1969), through which she portrayed a girl suspected of being a high-class prostitute by her jealous husband (Omar Sharif).
Aimée had risen to worldwide stardom after taking part in Trintignant’s lover — their characters have been widow and widower — in Lelouch’s 1966 race-car romance A Man and a Girl, which adopted a Palme d’Or win with a pair of Academy Awards.
Shot in three weeks on a tiny finances, the film grossed $14 million within the U.S. and greater than $50 million worldwide. Aimée turned the primary French actress to obtain an Oscar nom for a French-speaking position, although she misplaced out to Elizabeth Taylor for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
In 1986, Lelouch and the forged reunited to make A Man and a Girl: 20 Years Later, which premiered out of competitors in Cannes.
Aimée continued to work recurrently via the ’90s, performing in a number of different Lelouch productions whereas working with Altman, Bertolucci and different auteurs like Angés Varda, Jerzy Skolimowski and Mika Kaurismaki.
She did, nonetheless, cross up an opportunity to star alongside Steve McQueen within the position that Faye Dunaway made well-known in 1968’s The Thomas Crown Affair.
In The Birch-Tree Meadow, Aimée starred in Holocaust survivor Loridan-Ivens’ drama, which was filmed on the precise websites of Auschwitz and Birkenau. “At first, I didn’t need to settle for the half out of modesty,” she mentioned. “We shot within the precise barracks … It was horrible. I used to be sick, and after I got here again, I misplaced my hair.”
She was the recipient of an honorary Cesar Award from her dwelling nation in 2002.
Aimée was married 4 occasions, the final three to Greek director-producer Nico Papatakis, with whom she had a daughter, Manuella; to French singer, songwriter and actor Pierre Barouh, who carried out the title tune for and appeared as her deceased husband in A Man and a Girl; and eventually, from 1970-78, to British appearing legend Albert Finney.