Claude Jade
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Claude Jade (born Claude Marcelle Jorré on 8 October 1948 - 1 December 2006) was a French actress. The daughter of a professor-couple, she spent three years at Dijon's Conservatory of Dramatic Art, where in 1966, she won a best actress prize.
She subsequently moved to Paris and became a student of Jean-Laurent Cochet at the Edouard VII theater, and also began acting in a number of television productions. It was while she was performing in Pirandello's Henri IV as part of Sacha Pitoëff's production at the Théâtre Moderne that Claude Jade was discovered by François Truffaut, who was "completely taken by her beauty, her manners, her kindness, and her joie de vivre" and cast her in the role of Christine Darbon in his Stolen Kisses (1968). IMDB and other sources report that Jade and Truffaut were engaged at one point. The Truffaut film earned great acclaim, and placed Claude Jade in the international spotlight, thanks to her strong performance. The American critic Pauline Kael remarked that Claude Jade "seems a Catherine Deneuve less ethereally, more practical".
Claude Jade also reprised her role as Christine, Antoine Doinel's girlfriend and then wife, in Truffaut's movies Bed & Board and Love on the Run. In Bed & Board she gives an unforgettable performance both uproariously comical and unspeakably sad: Mindful that Antoine is having an affair with a Japanese beauty, Christine decks herself out as a faux Madame Butterfly to greet him one evening in their apartment. In French cinema, she starred successfully in Mon oncle Benjamin as Jacques Brel's delicious fiancée Manette, in the 70th as Eleonore in The Boat on the Grass, as Laura in Hearth Fires, as Françoise in Forbidden Priests, as Dominique in The Pawn and many others. Claude Jade was together with Romy Schneider, Annie Girardot, Catherine Deneuve and Brigitte Fossey one of the most amiable actresses in France of the 70th.
During the 80th in two russian films (as young terrorist Françoise in Teheran 43 and as Bolshevik Inessa Armand in Lenin in Paris), as lawyer Valouin in A Captain's Honor, as Marelle in Une petite fille dans les tournesols and as Alice in L'homme qui n'était pas là. In the 90th she works more on television and haves rare screen-appearances (Honor Roll, Bonsoir, The Raft of the Medusa)
Claude Jade has also played in American (as Michèle Picard in Alfred Hitchcock's Topaz), Belgian, Italian, Japanese, German and Soviet movies and she was the leading star - as Véronique d'Hergemont - in the television series The Island of Thirty Coffins (1979), one of her biggest success. In cinema Claude Jade also has starred in double-roles (1975 Le Choix, 1982 in Lise et Laura).
On stage she was a member of Jean Meyer's theatre company in Lyon, appearing in plays by Jean Giraudoux (Helena in La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu-The Trojan war will not take place and Isabelle in Intermezzo), Henry de Montherlant (Port Royal), James Joyce (The Exiles), Jean Racine (Britannicus), Honoré de Balzac (Le Faiseur), Vladimir Volkoff (The Interrogation), Catherine Decours (Regulus 93), Michel Vinaver (Dissident il va sans dire), Alfred de Musset (Lorenzaccio) and others. She was engaged on stages in Lyon, Nantes, Dijon and Paris. Her last stage role was in Jacques Rampal's Celimene and the Cardinal, performed in Paris and at festivals in 2006.
From 1998 to 2000 she was the leading actress of the television series Tide of Life (Cap des Pins) as "Anna Chantreuil". Her many contributions to French culture were recognised in 1998, when she was named a Knight in the légion d'honneur.
In 2000 she received the New Wave Award at West Palm Beach International Film Festival for her "trend-setting role in the world cinema." From the late '90s onward she starred in several made-for-TV movies ("Au bonheur des autres", "Porté disparue", "Sans famille"...) and TV-series like Cap des Pins (leading role from 1998 to 2000), La tête en l'air, Fleur bleue, Une femme d'honneur, Inspecteur Moretti, Inspecteur Moretti, Julie Lescaut, Navarro, La Crim, and Groupe Flag. During 2000 she also starred in short films (Drugs!, A San Remo).
Her autobiography, Baisers envolés, was released in March 2004. She died of a retinoblastoma in December 2006, following liver cancer, leaving behind her husband, French diplomat Bernard Coste, whom she married in 1972, and her son Pierre (*1976).
[edit] Selected filmography
- À San Remo (2004)
- Drugs! (2000)
- The Raft of the Medusa (1998)
- Bonsoir (1994)
- Honor Roll (1992)
- L'homme qui n'était pas là (The Man Who Wasn't There) (1987)
- A Little Girl in the Sunflowers (1984)
- Rendezvous in Paris (1983)
- Lise and Laura (1982)
- A Captain's Honor (1982)
- Le Bahut va craquer (1981)
- Lenin in Paris (1980)
- Teheran 43 (1980)
- L'amour en fuite (Love on the Run) (1979)
- Le Pion (The Pawn) (1978)
- Spiral of Mist (1977)
- Kita No Misaki (Cape of North) (1976)
- Malicious Pleasure (1975)
- Le Choix (The Choice) (1975)
- Too Much is Too Much (1974)
- La ragazza di via Condotti (Special Killers) (1974)
- Forbidden Priests (1973)
- Home sweet Home (1973)
- Hearth Fires (1972)
- Boat on the Grass (1971)
- Domicile conjugal (Bed & Board) (1970)
- Topaz (1969)
- Mon oncle Benjamin (My Uncle Benjamin) (1969)
- Le Témoin (A Change of Heart) (1969)
- Sous le signe de Monte-Cristo (Under the Sign of Monte Cristo) (1968)
- Baisers Volés (Stolen Kisses) (1968)
