French actress Jeanne Moreau, whose seven-decade career included five films with Orson Welles, has died in Paris. She was 89.
The French president’s office announced her death in a statement Monday without providing a cause.
Moreau, perhaps best known for her performance in Francois Truffaut’s 1962 Jules and Jim, continued working well into her 80s. She won awards at the Cannes Film Festival, which she presided over twice, and an honorary Academy Award.
An icon of the French New Wave, she worked with notable directors including Elia Kazan, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Michelangelo Antonioni.
Welles — who once described Moreau as “the greatest actress in the world” — directed her in The Trial, Chimes at Midnight, The Immortal Story and the unfinished The Deep. They appeared together in Tony Richardson’s The Sailor From Gibraltar.
She famously once said of Welles, “To me, Orson is so much like a destitute king. A ‘destitute’ king, not because he was thrown away from the kingdom, but (because) on this earth, the way the world is, there is no kingdom good enough for Orson Welles.”
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