Jeanne Moreau

With her smoldering magnetism and fierce intelligence (likened by Patti Smith to “a barbed-wire fence on fire”), French screen siren Jeanne Moreau breathed unforgettable life into some of the most complex women in all of twentieth-century cinema. Already a successful stage actor when she came to international attention for her turn in Louis Malle’s moody thriller ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS, Moreau soon went on to cement her status as an icon of the French New Wave with her role as the mercurial free spirit at the center of François Truffaut’s JULES AND JIM. Throughout her six-decade career, Moreau delivered fearless performances for some of the leading auteurs of her time, including Michelangelo Antonioni (LA NOTTE), Jacques Demy (BAY OF ANGELS), and Orson Welles (CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT), who proclaimed her “the greatest actress in the world.”