Simone Signoret (Simone Signoret): filmography and personal life of the actress (photo)

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Simone Signoret (full name Simone-Henriette-Charlotte Kaminker), French theater and film actress, was born on March 25, 1921 in the German city of Wiesbaden. She grew up in Paris, where she received a good education. At the beginning of the fascist occupation, she joined a traveling troupe of artists, and since that time her life has been inextricably linked with art.

First roles

After the end of the Second World War, Simone Signoret, already married to director Yves Allegre, played her first significant role in the film "Demons of the Dawn" directed by her husband. Prior to this film, the actress participated in low-budget films. A notable acting achievement of Simone Signoret can be considered her role in the film directed by Max Ophuls "Carousel", where she played the main character, the resilient prostitute Leocadia. In the center of the plot there are several characters from different walks of life, a married lady and her husband, a maid and her son, a soldier, a sophisticated lady of easy virtue, an inexperienced girl, an actress and a poet. All these people are caught up in a whirlwind of a kind of round dance, each character alternately falls in love with the previous partner, after parting with him, feelings pass to the next, and so on ad infinitum.

Golden Helmet

In 1952, Simone Signoret, whose photos had already begun to appear in European newspapers, played another prostitute (Marie) in the gangster film "Golden Helmet" directed by Jacques Becker. It was the next main role of the actress. Marie, nicknamed the Golden Helmet for her magnificent shock of golden hair on her head, lives quietly in the city of Joinville and meets with her friend Roland when the leader of the gang, Felix Leka, and several of his accomplices arrive in the city. Then a former member of the gang, Georges Manda, appears in the dance club, who has embarked on the path of correction and is no longer involved in criminal activities. Mutual love flares up between him and Marie, quickly turning into a destructive passion that destroys everything around.

Thrillers

The lead role in Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1955 film "The Devils" cemented Simone Signoret's reputation as an actress working in the thriller genre. She played the cruel and prudent mistress of the school principal Michel Delasale, husband of Christina Delasale, the legal owner of the educational institution. Nicole - that was the name of the director's concubine - entered into an agreement with him and developed a monstrous plan according to which he was supposed to die allegedly at the hands of his wife. The dead man was then resurrected in front of a shocked Christina, and she immediately died of a broken heart. The goal was achieved, the school and other property owned byDelasalle, was inherited by a treacherous husband. However, the story did not end there.

First Oscar

In 1959, one of the British film studios filmed the film "The Way Up" directed by Jack Clayton, in which Simone Signoret played the main character, a beautiful middle-aged lady named Alice Aisgil. For this role, the actress received several prestigious awards, the main of which was the Oscar. This prize was awarded to Simone for the best female role. The picture tells about several human destinies, which in the course of the plot are intertwined in the most bizarre way, delighting some participants and bringing grief to others. Alice dies in a car accident at the end of the film, and her death becomes the natural ending to this complicated story.

The main roles of the actress

The film "Famous Love Stories" staged in 1961 by director Michel Boiron, consists of four short stories that tell about the life of the highest nobility of France. Simone Signoret played a major role in the second novella, where her character, the noble Parisian Jenny de Lacour, decided on a crime to keep her young lover from marrying another woman. She bribed an elderly apothecary, and he splashed sulfuric acid in the young man's face. The aging Lacourt did not achieve her goal, she only aroused the suspicions of Commissioner Massot, who began investigating the crime. And when Jenny's guilt became apparent, she tried to escape and died underhorse-drawn carriage wheels.

The next film starring Simone Signoret, "Ship of Fools", was directed by Stanley Kramer in 1965. Several hundred people gathered on the ocean liner, who should get to the German city of Bremerhaven. The character of Simone Signoret is a Spanish countess who is addicted to drugs and faces a prison sentence. The ship's doctor Wilhelm Schumann falls in love with her. The elderly doctor understands that this love is the last, he has a sick heart and his days are numbered. The mutual love of two middle-aged people gives them both the last joy in life. Soon the liner arrives at the port, the countess is arrested by the police, and she leaves Wilhelm forever. The doctor returns to his cabin, and a few minutes later his heart stops.

Simone Signoret, whose filmography contains about 50 pictures, is one of the brightest stars of French cinema.

Private life

Personal life of actress Simone Signoret is not famous for stormy romances on the set. The actress married twice, her first husband was director Yves Allegre. The couple lived together from 1944 to 1949, on April 16, 1946, their daughter Katrin was born, who later also became an actress.

In August 1949, the famous actress Simone Signoret and the rising music hall star Yves Montand met on the terrace of the Golden Dove restaurant in Nice. A few days later, Simone, returning home, shared her impressions of her meeting with Montand with her husband. It became clear to both that this was their maritallife ends. They decided to wait with the divorce so as not to injure the three-year-old Katherine.

Simone went to Yves Montand later, and in December 1951 they got married. Simone wanted to constantly be close to her beloved husband, she even began to refuse film roles. And after some time, Yves Montand and Simone Signoret became family friends with the married couple of Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. They spent weekends together, traveled. In the end, an affair began between Marilyn and Montana. This was an ordeal for Simone, but she tried not to show it. Once the actress said during another interview: "Do you know at least one man who could resist Marilyn?"

Yves Montand soon returned, although in fact he did not leave. The couple lived together until the death of the actress in September 1985. Simone Signoret, whose cause of death is cancer, is buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris.