Famous French film actress Jeanne Moreau has passed away, Yahoo! reports. She was 89.
Moreau was celebrated for her groundbreaking work in cinema and for her emphasis on strong female roles that ran counter to expectations of women in film at the time. Throughout her career, she worked with some of the most noted directors in the industry, including Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard and Wim Wenders.
Moreau first rose to fame in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Her breakout role came in Francois Truffaut’s boundary-pushing Jules and Jim, where she played a woman in love with two soldiers on opposing sides of World War I. The 1962 romantic drama was well-received with Moreau’s performance settling in at the center of attention.
Moreau was born on January 23 in 1928 to an English cabaret club dancer.
“I interrupted her career,” Moreau once joked in an interview, according to Yahoo!.
French Emmanuel Macron" class="company-link">President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to the late actress, saying: “What set her apart was she ignored what was expected of her – never letting herself be pigeon-holed as a mindless seducer or femme fatale – to embrace new styles and forms.”
In addition to acting, Moreau was also a singer, screenwriter and director. She won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress (1960), the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress (1965) and the Cesar Award for Best Actress (1992).
