Danielle Darrieux, one of France's most enduring and glamourous film stars despite her wartime collaboration with the Germans, has died aged 100 at her home near Paris, her partner said Thursday. She became unwell "recently after a little fall", Jacques Jenvrin told AFP.
With her smouldering good looks and sulky pout, Darrieux became a huge international star in the 1930s, playing opposite Douglas Fairbanks Jr in the Hollywood romance "The Rage of Paris" in 1938.
But her decision to keep working after the Nazis occupied France, and to star in movies made by the studio set up by their propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, saw her branded as a collaborationist. However, Darrieux later said that she was forced to take part in a notorious publicity tour to Berlin in 1942 so she could free her husband, the playboy and diplomat Porfirio Rubirosa, who had been interned by the Nazis as a spy.
She left the German-backed studio after he was freed and went into hiding under a false name. Darrieux - who died on Tuesday - was still working at 99, and lent her voice for the grandmother in Marjane Satrapi's 2007 animated hit "Persepolis".
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