Jeanne Moreau

She began playing small roles in films in 1949 and eventually achieved prominence as the star of Lift to the Scaffold (UK)/Elevator to the Gallows (USA) (1958), directed by Louis Malle and Jules et Jim (1962), directed by François Truffaut. Most prolific during the 1960s, Moreau continues to appear in films to the present day.

Moreau was born in Paris, the daughter of Katherine (Buckley), a dancer who performed at the Folies Bergère, and Anatole-Désiré Moreau, a restaurateur. 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,' Jeanne says. '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." Read Less

She has also dated directors Louis Malle and François Truffaut, fashion designer Pierre Cardin, and Theodoros Roubanis, a Greek actor/playboy. Read Less