Anouk Aimée, the French film actress who became an international sex symbol as the aloof, mysterious and sensual star of Claude Lelouch’s 1966 romantic film “A Man and a Woman,” died Tuesday at her home in Paris. She was 92.
His death was announced by his daughter Manuela Papatakis on social media.
Even before she starred in “A Man and a Woman,” Ms. Aimée had made quite an impact in international films, notably in Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (1960), in which she played a sex-starved Italian socialite, and in Fellini’s “8 ½” (1963), in which she played the main character’s jealous but patient wife.
But with “A Man and a Woman,” the 28-year-old director’s low-budget project, which won an Oscar for best foreign film, Ms. Aimée created an image that lasted throughout her career.
As an emotionally reluctant young widow and film industry scriptwriter, she falls in love with a racecar driver and widower played by Jean-Louis Trintignant. Their long-awaited kiss, enhanced by a whirling camera and Francis Lai's hit theme, became one of the most iconic and recognizable film images of the era.
For this role, Ms. Amy was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress. She also won the BAFTA Film Award for Best Foreign Actress and the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actress.
In 2002, she was awarded an honorary César, the French equivalent of the Academy Award, for career achievements. She was named best actress at the 1980 Cannes International Film Festival for a darkly comic role in which she played a mentally disturbed woman whose brother hopes she will commit suicide in the Italian film “Salto nel vuoto,” which was released in the United States as “Leap Into the Void.”
Ms. Aimée's film career was primarily European, and her relatively few American films were not very successful. She was part of the all-star cast of Robert Altman's poorly received satire of the fashion industry, “Ready to Wear” (1994).
A quarter-century earlier she had played the title character in the 1969 drama “Justine,” directed by George Cukor. In an interview with The Palm Beach Post in 2000, she recalled her unsatisfactory working relationship with Cukor. “I kept talking about Fellini,” she said, “and he kept talking about Garbo.”
Ms. Aimée was born Nicole Françoise Sorya Dreyfus in Paris on April 27, 1932, the daughter of Henri Dreyfus, who acted in films under the name Henri Murray, and Geneviève Sorya, who also had a career in film acting.
At the age of 13, Françoise, as she was called, came to a director named Henri Calef, who cast her in “La Maison sous la Mer,” released in 1947. She was introduced simply as Anouk, which was the name of her character. The nickname Aimée, the French word for “love,” was added later.
While still a teenager, she attracted international attention as a modern-day Juliet in “The Lovers of Verona” (1951). Bosley Crowther, critic for The New York Times, disliked the film but called Ms. Amy “a lovely and enterprising miss.”
Ms. Aimée had starring roles in Jacques Demy’s “Lola” (1961), a New Wave soap opera about a cabaret entertainer, and in his romantic drama “Model Shop” (1969), in which the character of Lola reappears in a Los Angeles photographic studio. She played an art student in “Les Amants de Montparnasse” (1958), a biography of the artist Modigliani that was released in the United States in 1961 as “Modigliani of Montparnasse.”
“A Man and a Woman 20 Years Later,” Mr. Lelouch’s 1986 sequel that starred Ms. Aimée and Mr. Trintignant, was a box-office flop in France and the United States. His next effort, “The Best Years of a Life” (2019), fared somewhat better. Although critics found the story overly sentimental (the characters meet again in old age), as The Hollywood Reporter noted, the film hit “the occasional sparkling grace note.”
Ms. Aimée continued to work in European film and television well into her 80s. Her last American film was Henry Jaglom’s “Festival in Cannes” (2002), in which she played an aging European screen legend. “The Best Years of a Life” was her last film, preceded by “Tous les soleils” (2011), about a lonely music professor, and “Mins aleurs!” (2012), a comedy about a weight-loss retreat.
Ms. Aimee married and divorced four times. Her longest marriage was to British actor Albert Finney, from 1970 to 1978, her last. Her first marriage (1949-50) was to Edouard Zimmerman, and her second (1951-54) was to film writer and director Nikos Papatakis, with whom she had a daughter. Her third husband (1966-69) was Pierre Barouh, a French actor and composer whom she met when he played her character's dead husband in “A Man and a Woman.”
In addition to his daughter, his surviving members include a granddaughter and great-granddaughter.
Ms. Aimee has expressed strong opinions over the years on a number of topics, including politics and fashion, but she rarely speaks openly about herself. At most, she suggests a certain passivity or sense of fate when it comes to her life.
Interviewed at Cannes in 1986 by reporters, including Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, she looked back on her career and recalled being “discovered” in the old Hollywood sense while still in her teens.
“I didn't choose,” she said. “I took everything for granted.”
And in a 1967 interview by The Times about working with the director and her co-stars on “A Man and a Woman,” the film that changed her life, Ms. Aimée said simply, “We met, we all met at the right time.”
Derrick Bryson Taylor Contributed reporting.