French actress Claude Jade, favourite of director Francois Truffaut; dead at 58

Another fine star of French stage, cinema and TV has passed away. Very sad.

Claude Jade appeared in Hitchcock's Topaz. Philippe Noiret who just passed away last week was also in Topaz.

From mytelus.com/movies.

French actress Claude Jade, favourite of director Francois Truffaut; dead at 58

PARIS (AP) - French actress Claude Jade, who starred in several of director Francois Truffaut's best-loved films, has died, a colleague said Saturday. She was 58. Jade died Friday at a hospital in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, said Jacques Rampal, a playwright she had recently worked with. She had been suffering from eye cancer, which spread, he said.

As a young actress, Jade caught Truffaut's attention while appearing onstage in Shakespeare's "Henry IV" in the 1960s. He cast her as a young woman in love in the 1968 film "Baisers Voles" (Stolen Kisses), alongside leading man Jean-Pierre Leaud.

Truffaut continued the story of the characters' marriage and divorce in "Domicile conjugal" (Bed & Board) and "L'Amour en fuite" (Love on the Run).

Born Claude Jorre, Jade had a role in Alfred Hitchcock's 1969 film "Topaz," about a French spy network, and she also appeared alongside crooner Jacques Brel in the 1969 film "Mon Oncle Benjamin" (My Uncle Benjamin)."

Jade, who was a knight in France's prestigious Legion of Honour, also had a thriving career on the stage.

Her last role was in Rampal's play "Celimene et le Cardinal" (Celimene and the Cardinal), which played in Paris and in festivals this summer. Already suffering from cancer, she wore a plastic eye for her performances, Rampal said.

Before she died, she had been reading the script for a television movie that she hoped to shoot this spring, he said.

© The Canadian Press, 2006

French actress Claude Jade poses with an orange-shaped cake and a bouquet of flowers she received as part of "the most amiable actress award" named by the Cannes film festival press photographers, in this May 22, 1975 file photo. (AP/File)

 

RIP! How sad!

 

RIP.

This is how I'll remember her. What a beauty.

 

She was the lead female in my favorite French movie of all times: François Truffaut's Stolen Kisses.
Here is the gorgeous original 1968 American poster:

 

My pic above was from that movie. Great actress, great film. I do have the Truffaut Criterion boxset. I'll watch the film this week.