Simone Signoret

@Film & Theater Personalities, Timeline and Facts

Simone Signoret was a French actress who became the first French person to win an Academy Award

Mar 25, 1921

Jewish ActressesFrenchFilm & Theater PersonalitiesActressesAries Celebrities
Biography

Personal Details

  • Birthday: March 25, 1921
  • Died on: September 30, 1985
  • Nationality: French
  • Famous: Jewish Actresses, Film & Theater Personalities, Actresses
  • Birth Place: Wiesbaden, Germany
  • Gender: Female
  • Sun Sign: Aries

Simone Signoret born at

Wiesbaden, Germany

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Birth Place

Simone Signoret was twice married. Her first marriage was to filmmaker Yves Allégret from 1944 to 1949. This union produced a daughter Catherine Allégret who later on became an actress herself.

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Personal Life

She tied the knot for the second time with the Italian-born French actor Yves Montand in 1951. The couple remained together for almost 35 years until her death.

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Personal Life

During her later days, she suffered from pancreatic cancer which took her life on 30 September 1985.

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Personal Life

Simone Signoret was born on 25 March 1921 as Simone Henriette Charlotte Kaminker in Wiesbaden, Germany, to André and Georgette (Signoret) Kaminker. Her father was a French-born army officer from a Polish Jewish family while her mother was a French Catholic. Simone had two younger brothers.

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Childhood & Early Life

She was raised in Paris and grew up in an intellectually stimulating atmosphere. During the Nazi occupation of France, she had to start working in order to support her family and took up a job as a typist for a French collaborationist newspaper, ‘Les nouveaux temps’, run by Jean Luchaire.

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Childhood & Early Life

Around this time, she got the opportunity to meet an artistic group of writers and actors following which she developed an interest in acting. She received encouragement from her friends and decided to venture into acting.

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Childhood & Early Life

Simone Signoret began her acting career by playing small bits and parts in the early 1940s. During this time she took her mother's maiden name for the screen to help hide her Jewish roots. After working as an extra for a few years, she began getting more substantial roles after the World War II ended.

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Career

During the initial years of her career, she was type-cast due to her sensual looks and often offered the roles of prostitutes. Her 1950 film ‘La Ronde’ which had sexually explicit content earned her much popularity as did her role as a fallen woman in Jacques Becker's ‘Casque d'or’ the next year.

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Career

Her career took off in the 1950s with films like ‘Thérèse Raquin’ (1953), ‘Les Diaboliques’ (1954), and ‘The Crucible’ (1956). She touched newer heights with the release of the English independent film, ‘Room at the Top’ (1959) which made her an internationally famous star and earned her several awards and accolades.

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Career

Around this time she received several offers from Hollywood. She appeared in a few Hollywood films though she preferred to to work in France and England. Along with working in films, she was also active on the stage and in television. She appeared on the television anthology series ‘Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre’ in the 1960s for which she won an Emmy in 1966.

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Career

As she aged, she started receiving severe criticism for her fading looks. With age she gained weight and lost her glamorous looks. However, the actress was least perturbed by the criticisms and began taking up the roles of older women which she played with much aplomb as in ‘Le Chat’ (1971) and ‘Madame Rosa’ (1977).

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Career

One of Simone Signoret’s best known movies is ‘Room at the Top’ in which she portrayed Alice Aisgill, an unhappily married older woman who falls in love with a young man. The film was widely lauded and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including one for Best Actress, which Signoret won.

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Major Works

Her performance of La Condesa, a countess from Cuba with a drug addiction problem, in the 1965 movie ‘Ship of Fools’ was also much appreciated by the audiences and critics alike. The drama film which recounts the stories of several passengers aboard an ocean liner bound to Germany from Mexico in 1933 earned Signoret another Academy Award nomination.

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Major Works