French actress Annie Girardot

 Last week on February, 28th, 2011, France lost one of its main actresses: Annie Girardot. She was the most important actress in France in the 70’s. From her interviews on TV, I remember her as a very simple woman with no pretenses of star allure at all. Her very rough voice struck me as a child every time I heard her talk. She sounded a lot like a man  – which indeed lead her to often play roles that would normally have been held by men, such as taxi driver, police superintendent or reporter.

In the 80’s, she produced two musical shows that failed and bankrupted her. After a long absence, she finally came back in 1996, and won a César for best actress in a supporting role in “Les Misérables” de Claude Lelouch. She won another César award again in 2002, for best actress in a supporting role, in “La Pianiste” by Michel Hanecke. During the 1996 award ceremony, she declared: “I don’t know if French cinema has missed me, I have terribly missed French cinema… desperately… painfully. And your token of friendship, your love, make me think that maybe, and I insist on the maybe, I am not totally dead yet.”

In 2006, her lawyer announced that she was suffering from Alzheimer disease. Four years later, her daughter declared that her mother didn’t remember that she had once been an actress.

Her main movies:

Rocco et ses frères

Elle boit pas, elle fume pas, elle drague pas, mais… elle cause!

Mourir d’aimer

La Zizanie

Les Misérables

La Pianiste