Anna Karina

Biography: life and films

Anna Karina is a Danish actress, singer, writer and film director who first came to prominence in the early 1960s through her close association with Nouvelle Vague film director Jean-Luc Godard. Her original name was Hanne Karin Bayer and she was born on 22nd September 1940 in Solbjerg, Danemark. She started out as a cabaret singer in Denmark, but also worked as a model and appeared in publicity films. At the age of 17, she went to Paris and met the fashion designer Coco Chanel, who came up with her professional name Anna Karina. Jean-Luc Godard first noticed her whilst he was working as a critic on the Cahiers du cinéma. He offered her a small part in his debut feature À bout de souffle (1960), but she declined because it involved appearing in a nude scene.

Karina and Godard first worked together on Le Petit soldat, but because of the film's controversial subject matter its release was delayed for several years. Her French cinema debut was in Godard's next film Une femme est une femme, which won her the Best Actress award at the 1961 Berlin Film Festival. In between making these films, Godard and Karina married. Even though the marriage only lasted three years, the couple had a fruitful working relationship and made several notable films together, including Vivre sa vie (1962), Bande à part (1964), Alphaville (1965), and Pierrot le fou (1965).

Jean-Luc Godard was by no means the only great filmmaker that Anna Karina worked with. She also lent her talents to Luchino Visconti on Lo Straniero (1967), George Cukor on Justine (1969), André Delvaux on Rendez-vous à Bray (1971) and L'Oeuvre au noir (1988) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder on Chinese Roulette (1976). Her leading role in Jacques Rivette's La Religieuse (1967), another film that proved controversial, allowed her to give what many consider to be her finest screen performance. Karina made her directing debut in 1973 with Vivre ensemble, but it would be over three decades before she directed her next film, Victoria (2008). Whilst pursuing a busy acting career on the big and small screen, Anna Karina has also pursued a successful singing career and has found the time to pen four novels.

Filmography

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