“I am disgusted with your happiness! With your life that must go on, come what may. You could say you are all like dogs that lick everything they find. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness – provided a person doesn’t ask much of life. I want everything of life, I do; and I want it total, complete. Otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake offered for being a good little girl. I want to be sure of everything this very day; sure that everything will be as beautiful as when I was a little girl. If not, I want to die!” — Antigone, Jean Anouilh
“One of my biggest heroes is Jeanne Moreau. She has perfected all the moves, the high art of smoking a cigarette… Or walking with a straight skirt. Perfecting those kinds of rhythms are, to me, just as worthy of worship as somebody’s playin’ a great harmonica.” — Patti Smith
I’ve always felt Jeanne Moreau exuded a powerful and captivating combination of intelligence, independence and detachment, beauty and plainness. Her life is the cinema. She has said that acting is not about play acting but rather living in front of the camera. As such it is very difficult to divide her roles in films from her roles in life. More importantly, I’m not sure I want to. As critic Pauline Kael described her in her most famous role, “she’s the catalyst, the troublemaker, the source of despair as well as the source of joy. She is the enchantress who makes art out of life.” The anima as autocrat, the greatest incarnation of the modern woman. With performances in over one hundred films and thousands of photographed adventures, Jeanne Moreau is the French actress who became an icon and perhaps even a superhero. She was born at the end of the silent era and became president of the Cannes Film Festival decades later. She represents a creative life that is almost unprecedented in either gender but is the gold standard for the liberation of women. She is the archetype from Jules and Jim and we would do well to revere the actress who gave love and freedom and adventure a visual expression. She is a fantasy who has become a fact. I love her as I love cinema itself. I met Mademoiselle Jeanne Moreau this spring in her apartment in the 8th arrondissement between l’avenue Hoche and la place des Ternes. All my preconceptions instantly shifted. The formidable woman before me was warm and generous, very willing to spend an afternoon talking about her life and career. And still just as alluring to watch and listen to.
JEANNE MOREAU’S LIVING ROOM
Jeanne Moreau. — I will arrange my space with the cigarettes.
Shawn Dogimont. — I’m sorry for being late.
— But you are not late. We had work to do with Armelle [Jeanne’s assistant] as we always work on Thursday, hence we’ve been working since noon. Voilà.
— First of all I have to admit that I was very nervous coming here, I’m intimidated by your presence. I’ve never had to interview anybody of your stature before and I would love for it to be a free for all conversation and less an interview per se.
— I prefer that too. And there is no stature whatsoever, I’m just a human being, that’s all. But my life is long, I have a long past, lots of experiences. We can talk about whatever you want. It is always the same questions: How was Orson Welles? How is such and such? Which one do you prefer? Things like that. I’ve heard those many times. But maybe I’ll have a different answer, because we’re never the same, we change from one moment to the other. Look at the sky, it was raining two minutes ago, now the sky is clear.
— I figured I should ask if you’ve always wanted to be an actor?
— No. When I was a child I knew I didn’t want to be a grown up person because I found them to be… Always making a fuss about things that to me didn’t mean a lot. Passion, jealousy, things like that, and I thought their attitude was childish. I didn’t speak a lot, I listened a lot because I was sick all of my childhood. I had all the little illnesses and even big ones when I was a child. First I went to a religious school and I was very impressed by the rituals. My mother being English was a Protestant and in order to get married to the church you had to change or conform. My grandmother on the side of my father was so religious, so strict. Anyway I went to that school and I enjoyed very much the readings. And then I had to stop because I was always in bed. I spent a lot of time getting small presents because I had very bad medicine to take so I was given things and I asked for magazines for children. And from England I received little books. I could read when I was four years old. I had an uncle who died when I was ten years old who sent me books, adventures and things like that. So reading was very meaningful to me. Then in 1936 we had to leave this city which became famous later on during the war – Vichy was where Maréchal Pétain stayed – and we came back to Paris but the financial situation was a disaster, and my father instead of being the owner of the hotel, the restaurant and the bar in Vichy, became sort of a ‘gérant’, he was responsible for the night shift in a brasserie in Montmartre. So I had no money, my uncle was gone, and I couldn’t take any more ballet lessons – I wanted to be a ballet dancer – as regularly as I had been. My girlfriends – we were four and we were called the Musketeers – were allowed to go and see plays. To go I had to lie because the way I was brought up was very strict. I saw a performance at the theatre, the author was called Jean Anouilh – maybe he isn’t known in Anglo-Saxon countries anymore – and the heroine was Antigone. I really identify with that girl because she refused, she always said ‘no’, and for good reasons, because she didn’t want to submit to the laws of the state power. So I said that’s what I want to do, that’s what I want to be, I want to be on a stage. But I went on with my studies, I was good, and without my father knowing it, I became an actress. My mother went back to England with my sister, I was left alone with my father and he discovered through the newspaper’s first page – the equivalent of The Evening Standard – that I was on stage at La Comédie Française, and that I was very successful.
