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| Danielle Darrieux in her Fifties hey-day Photo: UniFrance |
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| The star acted right up to the present decade Photo: Unifrance |
She was particularly well known for her work with director Max Ophuls including La Ronde, made in 1950, in which she played a married woman who meets a young man (Daniel Gélin) for an assignation.
Two years later she worked with Opuls again on Le Plaisir as a good time girl, regretting her lost innocence. In 1953 she and Ophuls made the highly acclaimed The Earrings Of Madame De … in which she played opposite Vittorio De Sica.
Later she appeared in a tepid version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1955 but her later career was rescued from the doldrums by `Jacques Demy who offered her singing roles in The Young Girls Of Rochefort in 1967 and as a haughty widow in Un chambre en ville in 1982.
She memorably played Catherine Deneuve’s mother in Scene Of The Crime in 1986 and took up singing again for François Ozon in his musical 8 Women.
She was first married to the director Henri Decoin, but from 1942 to 1947 she was wed to the playboy Porfirio Rubirosa.
She has been compared to American stars Myrna Loy and Claudette Colbert in style and spirit.
We remember her life in pictures in our gallery
