Simone Signoret ( ) (25 March 1921 – 30 September
1985) was a
French cinema actress
often hailed as one of France's greatest movie stars. She became
the first French person to win an
Academy
Award, for her role in
Room at
the Top (1959).
In her lifetime she also received a BAFTA, an Emmy, Golden Globe, Cannes Film Festival
recognition and the Silver Bear for Best
Actress.
Early life
Signoret
was born Simone-Henriette-Charlotte Kaminker in
Wiesbaden
, Germany to André and Georgette (Signoret) Kaminker
as the eldest of three children, with two younger brothers.
Her father, a pioneering
interpreter who
worked in the
League of Nations,
was a French-born Jewish army officer of
Polish descent, who brought the family to
Neuilly-sur-Seine on the outskirts
of Paris. Signoret grew up in Paris in an intellectual atmosphere
and studied the English language in school, earning a teaching
certificate. She tutored English and Latin and worked part-time as
a typist for a French collaborationist newspaper,
Les nouveaux
temps, run by
Jean
Luchaire.
Career
During the
German occupation of France, Signoret mixed with an artistic group
of writers and actors who met at a café in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés
quarter, Café de Flore
. By this time, she had developed an
interest in acting and was encouraged by her friends, including her
lover,
Daniel Gélin, to follow her
ambition. In 1942, she began appearing in bit parts and was able to
earn enough money to support her mother and two brothers as her
father, who was a French patriot, had fled the country in 1940 to
join General
De Gaulle in England.
She took her mother's maiden name for the screen to help hide her
Jewish roots.
Signoret's sensual features and earthy nature led to type-casting
and she was often seen in roles as a prostitute.
She won considerable
attention in La Ronde
(1950), a film which was banned briefly in New York
as
immoral. She won further acclaim, including an acting award
from the British Film Academy, for her portrayal of another
prostitute in
Jacques Becker's
Casque d'or (1951). She
appeared in many notable films in France during the 1950s,
including
Thérèse Raquin
(1953), directed by
Marcel Carné,
Les Diaboliques
(1954), and
Les
Sorcières de Salem (1956), based on
Arthur Miller's
The Crucible.
In 1958,
Signoret acted in the English set Room at the Top (1959), which
won her numerous awards including the Best Female Performance
Prize at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best
Actress. She was the only
French cinema actress to receive an Oscar
until
Juliette Binoche in 1997
(Supporting Actress) and
Marion
Cotillard in 2008 (Best Actress), and the first woman to win
the award appearing in a foreign film.
She was offered films
in Hollywood
, but turned them down and continued to work in
France and England. She played opposite
Laurence Olivier in
Term of Trial (1962). She did work in
America for
Ship of Fools
(1965), which earned her another Oscar nomination, and appeared in
several other Hollywood films before returning to France in
1969.
Her one
attempt at Shakespeare, performing Lady
Macbeth opposite Alec Guinness at
the Royal Court
Theatre
in London in 1966 proved to be ill-advised,
although some critics were harsher and one referred to her English
as "impossibly Gallic".
In her later years, she was often criticized for gaining weight and
letting her looks go, but Signoret, who was never concerned with
glamour, ignored the insults and continued giving finely etched
performances. She won more acclaim for her portrayal of a weary
madam (Madame Rosa) in
La Vie
devant soi (1977) and as an unmarried sister who
unknowingly falls in love with her paralyzed brother via anonymous
correspondence in
I Sent
a Letter to my Love (1980).
Her memoirs,
Nostalgia Isn't What It Used To Be, were
published in 1978. She also wrote a novel,
Adieu Volodya,
published in 1985, the year of her death.
First married to the filmmaker
Yves
Allégret (1944-49), with whom she had a daughter
Catherine Allégret, herself an
actress. Her second marriage was to the Italian-born French actor
Yves Montand in 1950, a union which
lasted until her death.
She died
of pancreatic cancer in
Auteuil-Anthouillet, France; and is buried in Père Lachaise
Cemetery
in Paris.
The late, legendary American jazz musician, pianist, singer and
composer
Nina Simone took her stage name
from Signoret.
Filmography
Television award
Emmy Awards
See also
References
Bibliography
- Monush, Barry (ed), The Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film
Actors From the Silent Era to 1965. New York: Applause Books,
2003. ISBN 1-55783-551-9
- Signoret, Simone, Nostalgia Isn't What It Used To Be.
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978. ISBN 0-297-77417-4
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