Jeanne Moreau was born in Paris in 1928, the daughter of an English chorus girl and a French barman.  Whilst studying at the Conservatoire in Paris she made her stage debut in 1947 at the Avignon Festival of Theatre, after which she joined the Comédie-Française.  There she stayed for four years, participating actively in many productions, before leaving to join the more experimental TNP (Théatre Nationale Populaire). 

At this time, the early 1950s, she began to appear in French films, most notably opposite Jean Gabin in Gas-Oil .  Fame came in the late 1950s when Louis Malle cast her in two of his films, Ascenseur pour l’echafaud and Les Amants. 

With her surly yet alluring appearance and strong-willed, slightly acerbic personality, she was perfect material for the then flourishing New Wave, which coincided with the emergence of feminism in French cinema.  Having earned acclaim in Peter Brooks Moderato Cantabile she achieved international stardom, as an actress and singer, for her part as Catherine in François Truffaut’s masterpiece, Jules et Jim.

This was the high point of Jeanne Moreau’s career.  With the demise of the New Wave in the mid-1960s she was lured into more lightweight populist films, such as Mata-Hari, Agent H.21 and Viva Maria!, which dented her credibility as a serious actress. 

In the 1970s, she found an affinity for working with enterprising new directors on more off-the-wall dramas, including Bertrand Blier’s Les Valseuses and André Techiné’s Souvenirs d’en France.  She then went on to work as a director, making the films Lumière (1975) and L’Adolescente (1979), both of which were well received by the critics.  In 2001, she met with widespread acclaim for her portrayal of Margeurite Duras in Josée Dayan’s provocative true-life drama Cet amour-là. 

Jeanne Moreau has won a number of awards for her film work, including a Golden Lion at the 1992 Venice Film Festival and a 1997 European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award.  She is almost universally acknowledged as one of the acting legends of French cinema history.

“Being an actress is to be in tune with the fantasies of a man.  What woman never dreamt of that?”

“Beyond the beauty, the sex, the titillation, the surface, there is a human being.  And that has to emerge.”

“I gradually work myself into a frenzy as the shoot approaches, while we’re choosing the costumes or working with the make-up artist.  I’m not so much interested in my character as the film itself.”

“Sometimes the directors were afraid of what they brought out of me.”

“When I’m acting, I’m two beings.  There’s the one monitoring the distance between myself and the camera, making sure I hit my marks, and there is the one driven by this inner fire, this delicious fear.”

“When you live under the power of terror and segregation, you can’t ever start a work of art.”

“You don’t have to act in front of a camera.  You just have to be concerned and phfft!  - it begins.”

“You’re continually in the position of the woman about to experience the great love of her life.  All your woman’s wiles are put to use.”

“What is amazing for a woman of my age is that I change as the world is changing-and changing very, very fast.  I don’t think my mother had that opportunity to change.”

“Orson Welles said: ‘When it becomes painful for you not to be a director - then you do it.’ And so I did.  And in L’Adolescence, you’re seeing much more of what I am than when I act.”

“All those vitamins aren’t to keep death at bay, they’re to keep deterioration at bay.”

“As long as you don’t make waves, ripples, life seems easy.  But that’s condemning yourself to impotence and death before you are dead.”

“Death is an absolute mystery.  We are all vulnerable to it, it’s what makes life interesting and suspenseful.”

“It’s just as idiotic to say there is no life after death as it is to say there is one.”

“Knowing how to die is knowing how to live.  What is death anyway?  It’s the outcome of life.”

“You don’t have to be a wreck.  You don’t have to be sick.  One’s aim in life should be to die in good health.  Just like a candle that burns out.”

“As a matter of principle, I always come to a film like a blank slate, I don’t learn my lines in advance.  With this approach, I feel clean.”

“Characters who are on screen from start to finish are not necessarily the ones who have the greatest impact.”

“I can be intimidating, but not within the confines of a film shoot.”

“Some gods may cross your path, but why should gods be beautiful?  They could also be frightening.”

“I expose myself in an interview - and I assume the interviewer is exposing himself to.”

“I don’t like going where I’ve already been.  Life is a myriad of territories to discover.  I don’t want to waste time with what I already know.”

“I don’t like the idea of separating life and work.  That notion seems dated and a bit alien to me.”

“I need, absolutely, to be alone.”

“If you want to live your life through to the end, you have to live dangerously.”

“My aim in life is not to judge.”

“My life is very exciting now.  Nostalgia for what?  It’s like climbing a staircase.  I’m on the top of the staircase, I look behind and see the steps.  That’s where I was.  We’re here right now.  Tomorrow, we’ll be someplace else.  So why nostalgia?”

“To give a character life in a short space of time, it helps if you arrive on screen with a past.”

“To go out with the setting sun on an empty beach is to truly embrace your solitude.”

“You should not separate your life from what you do.”

“Beautiful?  Of course not!  That’s the whole point about me.”

“My face has changed with the years and has enough history in it to give audiences something to work with.”

“Age does not protect you from love.  But love, to some extent, protects you from age.”

“To give and receive love, you have to be in touch with pain, you have to be capable of provoking it and feeling it.”

“When Tony was madly in love with me, his relationship with Vanessa Redgrave was ending.”

“A woman won’t insist on marriage.  She doesn’t depend on the man.  In fact, she does, but is too brave to show it.  Oh, how brave women have to be.”

“Women will not talk about football unless one of them is in love with a football player, and then suddenly you discover that they know everything that is to be known about it.”

“I don’t think success is harmful, as so many people say.  Rather, I believe it indispensable to talent, if for nothing else than to increase the talent.”

“Success is like a liberation or the first phrase of a love story.”

“All fiction becomes autobiographical when the author has true talent.”

“Aging gracefully is supposed to mean trying not to hide time passing and just looking a wreck.  Don’t worry girls, look like a wreck, that’s the way it goes.”

“Although for some people cinema means something superficial and glamorous, it is something else.  I think it is the mirror of the world.”

“I am subject to very powerful lows.  When you have highs, you have terrible lows.  When you pinpoint that you are responsible for everything that happens to you, it is very frightening.”

“I can’t belong to groups.  I’ve tried.  I behave normally, but people don’t look at me normally.”

“I don’t feel guilt.  Whatever I wish to do, I do.”

“I think more and more people want to live alone.  You can be a couple without being in each other’s pockets.  I don’t see why you have to share the same bathroom.”

“I’m always amazed when young women who are having babies want their husbands to watch the babies come out.  I would never allow anything like that.”

“If you get trapped in the idea that what is most important is what image of yourself you’re giving to the world, you’re on a dangerous path.”

“It’s dangerous to assert oneself.”

“One thing you have to give up is attaching importance to what people see in you.”

“People’s opinions don’t interfere with me.”

“Some children I have met are very beautiful.  Some children are imbeciles, vulgar, terrible.”

“Some people are addicts.  If they don’t act, they don’t exist.”

“Something pretty...  that’s just the surface.  People worry so much about aging, but you look younger if you don’t worry about it.”