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.
© James Travers 2017
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