Oscar-nominated French actor Anouk Aimée has died aged 92.
Aimée received an Academy Award nomination for her role in Claude Lelouch‘s A Man and a Woman, which was released in 1966.
That same decade, Aimée appeared in films by esteemed filmmakers Federico Fellini – La Dolce Vita (1960), 8½ (1963) – and Jacques Demy (Lola, 1961).
Aimée’s death was announced by her daughter, Manuela Papatakis, who wrote on Instagram: “With my daughter, Galaad, and my granddaughter, Mila, we have great sadness to announce the departure of my mother Anouk Aimée.
“I was right by her side when she passed away this morning at her home in Paris.”
Born Nicole Françoise Florence Dreyfus, Aimée was born in Paris to the actors Henri Murray and Geneviève Sorya. Though Aimée’s father was Jewish, she was raised a Roman Catholic by her mother and converted to Judaism as an adult.
The star made her acting debut at 14 in Henri Calef’s La Maison sous la mer in 1947 after which she adopted her character’s moniker Anouk, while Marcel Carné’s La Fleur de l’âge co-writer, Jacques Prévert, completed her stage name with Aimée.
Frequently described as “regal”, “intelligent” and “enigmatic” by journalists throughout her career, Aimée went on to star in over 70 films between 1947 and 2019, including George Cukor’s Justine (1969), Bernardo Bertolucci’s Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981) and Robert Altman’s Prêt à Porter (1994).
When Aimée was nominated for an Oscar for best actress opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant in A Man and a Woman, she was one of a small number of actors to ever be put forward for the accolade for a performance in a foreign film.
Despite being made on a small budget of only $100,000, A Man and a Woman, in which Aimée played a film production assistant who meets a race-car driver, was a huge commercial success and went on to take more than $25m at the box office and win the Academy Awards for best original screenplay and foreign language film.
Of acting, Aimée told The Guardian in 2007, “It is always better to have a few scenes with a good director, than many scenes with a bad one… A film is always much richer when actors have the confidence not to explain, but just to do; when they feel secure enough to leave things open.”
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Aimée maintained her career hadn’t been “unimpressive” but admitted she hadn’t “always made the right choices” career-wise and had taken parts she “didn’t particularly like” because she wanted to work with certain directors.
“But there’s very little that I actually regret doing,” she added. “I had to do most of it, I needed the money. There are one or two things I could have said yes to, though. That’s probably true.”
Aimeé was married four times, the first time to journalist Edouard Zimmermann (1949-50), the second to filmmaker Nikos Papatakis (1951-55), the third to composer Pierre Barouh (1966-69) and the last time to actor Albert Finney (1970-78).
All four of Aimeé’s marriages ended in divorce. She is survived by her daughter, Manuela Papatakis.
