Her role as a lovelorn widow in the 1966 film, famous for its theme song “Chaba-daba-da, Chaba-daba-da,” earned her an Academy Award nomination, a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress and her Hollywood breakthrough.
French star Anouk Aimé, who died on Tuesday aged 92, captivated a generation of moviegoers with her heartbreaking romance in Claude Lelouch's blockbuster “A Man and a Woman.”
Her role as a lovelorn widow in the 1966 film, famous for its theme song “Chaba-daba-da, Chaba-daba-da,” earned her an Academy Award nomination, a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress and her Hollywood breakthrough.
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Amy's air of grace and sophistication had already made her a star of such European film classics as Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 1/2 (1963), and she also made an unforgettable appearance as an ageing showgirl in Jacques Demy's heartbreaking musical Lola (1961).
Fellini in particular adored her, saying that “her face has the same seductive sensuality as those great mystic queens, those goddesses of femininity like (Greta) Garbo, (Marlene) Dietrich and (Cindy) Crawford.”
“Anouk Aimee represents the type of woman who worries you to death,” he said.
That combination of melancholy and passion defined much of her incredible career, and American director Robert Altman brought her out of retirement and rekindled her old spark in 1994's acclaimed film Prêt-à-Porter, in which she co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni.
– Nazis on the run –
Born Françoise Dreyfus on April 27, 1932, in Paris, Amy was the descendant of a theatrical family.
When she was eight years old, German troops entered the city and her life changed forever: although she had been raised Catholic, her father was Jewish, putting her family's lives at risk.
“We were constantly moving, hiding… but then the Germans showed up and took over the apartment downstairs,” she recalled.
Her family sent her to the countryside, where they thought she would be safer, and she changed her name so she would no longer have to wear the yellow star.
She later said that the comfort she received from animals during her time in hiding led to a lifelong love of them.
After the war ended, her career began when, at the age of 13, she was picked off the streets to star in a film directed by Marcel Carné, which was never completed due to a lack of funding.
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– Anouk's “birth” –
She finally made her film debut the following year and took on the name Anouk, which helped make the name popular in France.
It was French poet and playwright Jacques Prévert who convinced her to change her surname to Aymé, which means “beloved.”
Her career began in 1949 with André Cayatte's Les Amants de Verona. Her grace and beauty led to a number of roles, including Jacques Becker's Montparnasse 19, before she went on to star alongside Demy and Fellini.
The huge success of A Man and a Woman opened the door to Hollywood, where Amy starred opposite Omar Sharif in Sidney Lumet's The Promise and George Cukor's Justine in 1969.
But she took a seven-year break from work after marrying her fourth husband, British actor Albert Finney, in 1970, and divorcing eight years later.
“Cinema is like a meeting between lovers,” Amy told AFP. “I love that. It's like a gift, and I love the feeling of being loved.”
– lover –
Romance and lovers' flirting is an art form for Amy, and she pulls it off with trademark grace.
She had a number of extramarital affairs, most notably with Omar Sharif, Warren Beatty, and the much younger director Ellie Chraki, with whom she made many films, as well as with the bisexual writers Jean Genet and Jean Cocteau.
“She's never happier than when she's miserable between relationships,” said Dirk Bogarde, the witty British actor who has known her since she was 15.
Her film appearances decreased in the 1980s, but she won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980 for her role in Marco Bellocchio's A Leap in the Dark.
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In 2002 she received an honorary César Award, France's equivalent of the Oscars, and four years later Cannes paid tribute to her.
She walked the festival red carpet again in 2019 at the premiere of Lelouch's sequel to A Man and a Woman, which reunited Amy with her original co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant, now in his 80s, reprising their roles.
Amy has a daughter with film director Niko Papatakis, and was also married to composer Pierre Barouh, who wrote the famous theme song for A Man and a Woman.
She spent the last decades of her life in the Montmartre district of Paris, surrounded by cats and dogs.
©Agence France-Presse