Monday’s Muse: Jeanne Moreau

With strong characteristics, sensual, expressive features and an enigmatic air of mystery about her Jeanne Moreau is the icon of French cinema.

Director Louis Malle’s “The Lovers” (Les Amants, 1959), largely controversial in its day, led the media to nickname Jeanne Moreau as ‘The New Bardot’. Thanks to her feature in that film, Moreau went on to work with many of the best known New Wave and avant-garde directors, and to this day she remains one of France’s most accomplished actresses.

Excessively unsentimental, and known to dislike the idea of nostalgia – her motto is: “The life you had is nothing. It is the life you have that is important.”

This charasmatic and spontaneous approach to life and love helped her maintained friendships with prominent writers such as Jean Cocteau and Henry Miller, and she has been known to fling with fashion designer Pierre Cardin, and jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. Anyone that can attract and keep such company deserves to be celebrated…

{Image: Jeanne Moreau as herself in “Alex in Wonderland,” Hollywood Boulevard, 1970.}