Anouk Aimée

Nicole Dreyfus started acting at 14 in 1947, studying dance and performance alongside school. She worked steadily in French cinema through the 1950s, then exploded into view with La dolce vita in 1960 - Fellini's portrait of Roman decadence that made her a rising star. She returned for his 8½ in 1963, played the title role in Demy's Lola in 1961, and in 1966 starred in A Man and a Woman, a film that "virtually reignited the lush on-screen romance in an era of skeptical modernism" and earned her Oscar, BAFTA, and Golden Globe nominations (she won the latter two). She kept working across borders - Cukor's Justine, Bertolucci's Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, Altman's Prêt à Porter - and won Best Actress at Cannes in 1980 for A Leap in the Dark. By the time France gave her an honorary César in 2002, she'd appeared in 70 films over seven decades, always with what Life once called an "enigmatic beauty" that lingered after the lights came up. She worked until 2019 and died in June 2024.