Anouk Aimée, the radiant French star of ‘A Man and a Woman’ and ‘La Dolce Vita,’ dies at 92

PARIS (AP) — Anouk Aimée, the radiant French star and dark-eyed great thing about traditional movies together with Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” and Claude Lelouch’s “A Man and a Lady,” has died. She was 92.

Aimée’s agent, Sébastien Perrolat stated in an textual content message to The Related Press that Aimée died Tuesday morning “surrounded by her family members.” He didn’t give a explanation for dying.

“I used to be beside her when she died this morning, at her house in Paris,” Aimée’s daughter Manuela Papatakis wrote on Instagram.

Aimée labored with an array of acclaimed administrators, together with Jacques Demy, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jacques Becker, Robert Altman and Sidney Lumet. She was maybe greatest identified for 1966’s “A Man and a Lady,” through which she starred reverse Jean-Louis Trintignant as a widow who meets a widower race-car driver (Trintignant) on the boarding college the place every has a toddler attending.

The movie was an infinite success, successful the Palme d’Or on the Cannes Movie Pageant. Aimée received a Golden Globe for her efficiency and was nominated for an Oscar. The movie received Academy Awards for Lelouch’s screenplay and for greatest international language movie.

However Aimée’s profession spanned seven many years — she reunited with Lelouch and Trintignant for 2019’s “The Finest Years of a Life” — and throughout that point remained a uniquely elegant and enigmatic presence. She stared in Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (1960) because the seductive socialite Maddalena and once more within the director’s “8 1/2” (1963) because the estranged spouse of Marcello Mastroianni’s filmmaker.

Fellini as soon as stated Aimée “represents the kind of lady who leaves you flustered and confused — to dying.” He stated she belonged among the many pantheon of cinema’s “nice, mysterious queens,” evaluating her to Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford.

“A movie is at all times a lot richer when actors have the boldness to not clarify, however simply to do; after they really feel safe sufficient to depart issues open,” Aimée advised The Guardian in 2007.

Aimée was born Nicole Françoise Florence Dreyfus on April 27, 1932, to actor mother and father Henri Dreyfus (who acted beneath the title Henry Murray) and Genevieve Sorya. On the age of 13, Aimée was strolling down a Paris road when the director Henri Calef stopped her and requested if she wish to be a film. Aimée later stated she was on the best way to see “Double Indemnity” together with her mom.

Aimée took her character’s title, Anouk, from her first movie: “The Home Below the Sea.” “Aimée” — the French phrase that means “beloved” — got here from the poet Jacques Prévert who co-wrote her first lead position in 1951’s “The Lovers of Verona,” a modern-day “Romeo and Juliet.”

Following “La Dolce Vita,” Aimée starred in Jacques Demy’s “Lola” (1961) a New Wave cleaning soap opera a few cabaret entertainer with a string of lovers. “Lola,” Demy’s first movie, was much less appreciated on the time however is now thought-about a standout of French New Wave cinema. Eight years later, Aimée reprised the position within the Los Angeles-set “Mannequin Store,” enjoying a girl working in a photograph studio.

Aimée married and divorced 4 instances. The primary three marriages — to Edouad Zimmermann, the filmmaker Nikos Papatakis, the actor and composer Pierre Barouh — didn’t final 4 years. Her longest was to the British actor Albert Finney, whom she was married to from 1970 to 1978.

Although Aimée had brushes with Hollywood, together with Lumet’s “The Appointment” and Altman’s “Prêt-à-Porter,” she remained largely a European movie actor. Among the many roles she turned down was Vicki Anderson in “The Thomas Crown Affair,” the position that finally went to Faye Dunaway who starred reverse Steve McQueen.

However Aimée remained a legend in France. She received greatest actress in Cannes for the 1980 darkish comedy “A Leap within the Darkish.” In 2002, she was given a lifetime achievement award on the Césars, France’s equal to the Oscars. On Tuesday, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, in a press release, known as her “the image of class, expertise, dedication.”

“The key — it was Fellini who taught me this — is that an important factor of all is to hear,” Aimée advised The Guardian of appearing. “Simply hear, to what the opposite characters say. And don’t take it too critically. So, no regrets.”

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AP Movie Author Jake Coyle reported from New York.