Jean Seberg

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Jean Seberg
Image:Jean Seberg1.jpeg Jean Seberg as she appeared on the poster of Bonjour Tristesse
Born	November 13, 1938 Marshalltown, Iowa
Died	September 8, 1979

Jean Seberg (November 13, 1938 – September 8, 1979) was an American actress who spent an important part of her career in France.

1 Biography
2 Legacy
3 Partial filmography
4 Footnotes
5 External links

[edit] Biography

Seberg was born in Marshalltown, Iowa. She was discovered by Otto Preminger, who directed her in her first two films. She made her film debut in 1957 in the title role of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan. She would go on to star in 34 films in Hollywood and in France where she lived in Paris with her first husband, attorney François Moreuil. She became even more of an icon from her roles in numerous French films and the tragedy of her turbulent life. Among her roles, she co-starred with Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Luc Godard's classic work of New Wave cinema, Breathless (original French title: A bout de souffle). She also appeared in the 1959 classic Peter Sellers comedy, The Mouse that Roared. In 1969, she appeared in her first and only musical film, Paint Your Wagon, based on Lerner and Loewe's stage musical. Her singing in the film, however, was dubbed. While many remember the film fondly, it was a box-office and critical disaster at the time. It also marked the first time that Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood had ever sung in a musical. And Seberg was one of the many stars in the 1970 film, Airport, which spawned all of the all-star disaster films that followed during the next decade.

During the latter part of the 1960s, Seberg used her high-profile image to voice support for the NAACP and supported Native American school groups such as the Mesquakie Bucks at the Tama settlement near her home town of Marshalltown, for whom she purchased $500 worth of basketball uniforms. She also supported the Black Panther Party. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover considered her a threat and in 1970, when she was seven months pregnant, created a story [1] to leak to the media that the child she was carrying was not fathered by her second husband, Romain Gary, but by a black civil rights activist. The story was reported by Joyce Haber of the Los Angeles Times newspaper, and Newsweek magazine. She miscarried shortly thereafter. In a press conference after the miscarriage she presented the press with a picture of her fetus to demonstrate that the child did not have a father of African heritage. Seberg stated that the trauma of this event brought on premature labor and her child was stillborn. The child was named Nina Gary; the baby was actually fathered by Carlos Navarra<ref>"Played Out" (Random House, 1981) David Richards, p.234</ref>. According to her husband, after the loss of their child she suffered from a deep depression and became suicidal. She also became dependent on alcohol and prescription drugs. She made several attempts to take her own life, including throwing herself under a train on the Paris Métro.

Seberg's problems were compounded when she went through a form of marriage to an Algerian playboy, Ahmed Hasni, on May 31, 1979. The brief ceremony had no legal force because she had taken film director Dennis Charles Berry as her third husband in 1972 and the marriage was still valid. In July, Hasni persuaded her to sell her opulent apartment on the Rue du Bac, and he kept the proceeds (reportedly 11 million francs in cash), announcing that he would use the money to open a Barcelona restaurant. The couple departed for Spain but she was soon back in Paris alone, and went into hiding from Hasni, who she said had grievously abused her.

In August 1979, she went missing, and was found dead 11 days later in the back seat of her car in a Paris suburb. The police report stated that she had taken a massive overdose of barbiturates and alcohol (8g per litre). A suicide note ("Forgive me. I can no longer live with my nerves") was found in her hand, and suicide was ultimately ruled the official cause of death. However, it is often questioned how she could have driven to the address in the 16th arrondissement with that amount of alcohol in her body, and without the distance glasses she always maintained she absolutely needed for driving.

Image:Seberggrave.jpg

Seberg was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France.

[edit] Legacy

In 1995 a documentary of her life was made, titled Jean Seberg: American Actress. Mary Beth Hurt played Seberg in a voice-over.
A musical, Jean, by Marvin Hamlisch, based on the life of Jean Seberg, was presented in 1983 at the National Theatre in London.
The short 2000 film Je T'aime John Wayne is a tribute parody of Breathless, with Camilla Rutherford playing Seberg's role.
Actress Kirsten Dunst has proposed making a film about Seberg's life.
Her second husband, Romain Gary, with whom she had a son, Alexandre Diego Gary, also committed suicide a year after her death.
The Irish band, The Divine Comedy, make reference to 'Little Jean Seberg' in their song titled "Absent Friends".
She secured the role in Otto Preminger's Saint Joan, after being chosen from 18,000 hopeful actresses.
The role of Patricia Franchini in À bout de souffle (1960), which made her famous, was actually first offered to 1954 Turkish National Beauty Contest runner-up Tuana Altunbashian, whose father was an Armenian journalist in Metz, France.
In 2004 the French author Alain Absire published Jean S., a fictionalised biography. Seberg's son Diego Gary brought a lawsuit unsuccessfully attempting to stop publication.