French star Anouk Aimee, who died on Tuesday aged 92, cast a spell over a generation of film-goers with her doomed romance in Claude Lelouch’s box-office smash “A Man and A Woman”. Her role as a lovelorn widow in the 1966 film famous for its “chabadabada, chabadabada” theme tune won her an Oscar nomination, a Golden Globe for best actress and her entry into Hollywood.
Who is Anouk Aimée?
Nicole Françoise Florence Dreyfus, known professionally as Anouk Aimée or Anouk, was a French film actress who appeared in 70 films from 1947 until 2019. Having begun her film career at age 14, she studied acting and dance in her early years, besides her regular education. Although the majority of her films were French, she also made films in Spain, Great Britain, Italy and Germany, along with some American productions.
Anouk Aimée Career
The war over, her career began at the age of 13 when she was picked from the street to play in a Marcel Carne film that was never finished for lack of money. She finally made her screen debut the following year and adopted her character’s name, Anouk, as her own. It would become popular in France thanks to her. It was French poet and screenwriter Jacques Prevert who convinced her to also change her surname to Aimee, meaning “loved”. Her career took off in 1949 with Andre Cayatte’s “The Lovers of Verona”. Her class and beauty brought her a string of roles including in “Montparnasse 19” by Jacques Becker before she began to work with Demy and Fellini.
The massive success of “A Man and a Woman” opened the door to Hollywood, where Aimee played opposite Omar Sharif in Sidney Lumet’s “The Appointment” and George Cukor’s “Justine” in 1969.
Aimee’s elegant sophistication had already made her a star of such European masterpieces as Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (1960) and “8 1/2” (1963), and she was unforgettable as the ageing showgirl in Jacques Demy’s heartbreaking musical “Lola” (1961). Fellini in particular revered her, saying her “face has the same intriguing sensuality as that of (Greta) Garbo, (Marlene) Dietrich or (Cindy) Crawford, these great mysterious queens, these priestesses of femininity.
“Anouk Aimee represents the kind of woman who worries you to death,” he said. That combination of “melancholy and passion” marked much of her remarkable career, with the American director Robert Altman bringing her out of retirement to rekindle her old spark with Marcello Mastroianni in the acclaimed “Pret a Porter” in 1994. Born Francoise Dreyfus in Paris on April 27, 1932, Aimee was the scion of a theatrical family.
