Françoise Fabian

A dark-haired, exotic beauty, Fabian made her film debut in Pierre Foucaud's "Memoirs d'un flic" (1955) and passed the rest of the decade in unmemorable features. By the mid-1960s, she began to find better roles (e.g., Louis Malle's "Le voleur/The Thief of Paris" and Luis Bunuel's "Belle du jour" both 1967). Fabian was memorable in the title role of Eric Rohmer's "Ma nuit chez Maud/My Night at Maud's" (1969), as the beautiful divorcee whose charms Jean-Louis Trintignant finally succeeds in resisting. Subsequent highlights have included Claude Lelouch's "La bonne annee" (1973), the title role in "Madame Claude" (1977) and Lelouch's "Partir revenir" (1984). Although she has continued to work through the early 90s, most of her later roles were not worthy of her gifts.