Actress Anouk Aimée, the delicate 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 stated in an Instagram submit on Tuesday that the star died at her house in Paris with out offering additional particulars.
Maybe greatest recognized for her function reverse Jean-Louis Trintignant in Lelouch’s A Man and a Girl (1966) — for which she obtained an Oscar nomination for greatest 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 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 characteristic 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 struggle; and Yvan Attal’s … And They Lived Fortunately Ever After (2004).
In a 2007 interview, the elegant Aimée revealed her secret of performing to The Guardian: “It was Fellini who taught me this: An important factor of all is to hear, simply hearken to what the opposite characters say. And don’t take [yourself] too severely.”
Born in Paris on April 27, 1932, Aimée, whose actual title was Judith Dreyfus — although some official paperwork checklist her first title as Nicole — was the daughter of actor Henri Dreyfus (stage title: Henry Murray) and actress Genevieve Sorya (nee Durand).
Throughout World Struggle II, she took her mom’s maiden title to keep away from Nazi persecution, shifting 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 Girls.
When she was 14, Aimée was noticed by movie director Henri Calef, who solid 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 title, including “Aimee” (which implies “liked” in French) on the suggestion of writer 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.
In the course of the subsequent 20 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 solid Aimée in his masterpiece La Dolce Vita, through which she performed the rich heiress Maddalena, one in every of Marcello Mastroianni’s love pursuits. The 2 would work collectively once more three years later in Fellini’s autobiographical traditional 8 1/2, the place she portrayed Mastroianni’s spurned spouse, Luisa. (The character was based mostly on Fellini’s actual spouse, actress Giulietta Masina.)
When recalling her work with Fellini for Paris Match, Aimée stated, “I found laughter and the joie de vivre, and I realized to like my job as an actress.”
After 8 1/2, Aimée moved to Italy for a spell and made a number of films there, together with Marco Bellocchio’s drama A Leap within the Darkish (1980), for which she obtained greatest actress honors in Cannes.
She additionally starred in Lumet’s Rome-set psychological thriller The Appointment (1969), through which she portrayed a lady 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 price range, 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 function, although she misplaced out to Elizabeth Taylor for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
In 1986, Lelouch and the solid reunited to make A Man and a Girl: 20 Years Later, which premiered out of competitors in Cannes.
Aimée continued to work usually by means of 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, move up an opportunity to star alongside Steve McQueen within the function 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 wish to settle for the half out of modesty,” she stated. “We shot within the precise barracks … It was horrible. I used to be sick, and once I got here again, I misplaced my hair.”
She was the recipient of an honorary Cesar Award from her house 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 track for and appeared as her deceased husband in A Man and a Girl; and at last, from 1970-78, to British performing legend Albert Finney.