French actress Jeanne Moreau, who lit up the screen in "Jules et Jim" and starred in some of the most critically-acclaimed films of the 20th century, has died aged 89, her agent said Monday. The gravel-voiced actress epitomised the freedoms of the 1960s and brought daring, depth and danger to a string of cinematic masterpieces from Louis Malle's "Lift to the Scaffold" to Jacques Demy's "Bay of Angels".
Moreau, who was still making films at 87, was found dead at her home in Paris early Monday, the district's mayor told AFP. Once described by US director Orson Welles as "the best actress in the world", she was a feminist icon and trailblazer for liberated women as well as the face of French New Wave.
"Physical beauty is a disgrace," she once said in her characteristic rasp, her voice redolent with strong French cigarettes she smoked. Yet that did not stop her becoming the thinking man's femme fatale with film scholar David Shipman calling her "the arthouse love goddess". Leading tributes to the plain-speaking actress, French President Emmanuel Macron said Moreau had "embodied cinema" and she was a free spirit who "always rebelled against the established order".
Born in Paris 1928 to an English chorus girl from Oldham and a French cafe owner, she took to acting with apparent effortless ease, defying her father by joining the Paris conservatoire at the age of 18, and gaining entry to the elite Comedie Francaise theatre troupe two years later. Her breakthrough came in 1958 when she starred in two films for Malle that challenged the moral certitudes of the times. Moreau married twice and had a son, Jerome, from her first marriage to Richard.
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