Clara Morgane (born Emmanuelle Aurélie Munos on 25 January 1981 in Marseille) is a French singer, media personality, TV host, and a former porn star.
In 2007, she started a singing career. Her debut album, DéCLARAtions was released 18 June 2007, with a mixture of funk, hip-hop and R’n’B. Clara Morgane has written the lyrics for all the songs. The first single, J’Aime featuring rapper Lord Kossity and Sexy Girl have been available online since 26 March 2007.
In 2019, she participated in the tenth season of Danse avec les stars – the French version of Dancing with the Stars. She was partnered with professional dancer Maxime Dereymez. On October 26, 2019, they were eliminated finishing 6th out of 10 contestants
She received a Hot d’Or Award for “Best French Starlet” in 2001.[3]
She was elected the top French and eighth sexiest woman in the world by the French edition of the magazine FHM
In her mould-breaking role as Cathy Gale, the ‘Avengers’ star created a new, thrilling and hugely influential kind of female role-model.
Honor Blackman, the actor best known for playing the Bond girl Pussy Galore became a household name in the 1960s as Cathy Gale in The Avengers and had a career spanning eight decades.
As well as her parts in The Avengers and the Bond film Goldfinger, Blackman played the vengeful goddess Hera in Jason and the Argonauts and Laura West in the 1990s sitcom The Upper Hand. She appeared in theatrical productions including The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady and Cabaret.
Born in east London to a middle-class family – her father was a civil servant – Blackman credited the elocution lessons she received as a birthday gift as allowing her to progress in her acting career. After studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she had small roles in films and TV shows such as Titanic drama A Night to Remember (1958) and the Edgar Wallace vigilante series The Four Just Men (1959-60).
Blackman’s proficiency in martial arts helped her land what became her signature role, that of Pussy Galore, the glamorous villain assisting in Goldfinger’s plot to rob Fort Knox. Released in 1964, Goldfinger was the third Bond film and was a global hit. However, Blackman later told she regretted leaving The Avengers to play the part. “I walked away at the wrong moment. They were just going from black and white to colour, they were starting to get real film money.”
The actress behind the famous Bond Girl Pussy Galore was a high-ranking judoka who published her own book on self-defense the year after Goldfinger came out.
The book, a compilation of judo and karate-influenced techniques demonstrated in photos and described in text by the trio, was originally intended as a bit of a novelty item and a way to capitalize on her fame as Britain’s first action heroine. But it ended up striking a chord with her audience. Not only had the young women who idolized Cathy Gale never seen anyone who looked anything like themselves so capably handling themselves on screen—they’d never had anything like her book made for them, either. Although its techniques might seem quaint or even laughable by today’s standards, her book made history as one of the first of its kind to be made specifically for women. Bruce Lee was reported to have a copy in his extensive library of martial arts books.
A half century after she first stepped into a dojo she declared :
“It was on Panton Street and Joe and Doug Robinson were my instructors, and they said it was down in the basement. I arrived at the premises and started to go down the steps… and the smell! Everybody’s sweating down there. And I got to the bottom and all of the mats were damp because everybody sweats and they’re breaking falls and banging like mad. And I fondly thought—quite rightly, I think—that I might have a private lesson. Not a bit of it! I was in there with the chaps. And there I was and I had to put gear on and everything, and they’d never had a woman before, so there wasn’t anywhere for me to change.”
Honor Blackman’s Book of Self-Defence became popular enough to merit a U.S. release the following year and a profile in the May 20, 1966 issue of Life Magazine. “She encourages pretty young things to take up judo purely as a precautionary measure,” the article, ripe with mid-’60s sexism, explains. “If a man were going to attack someone, he’d be a fool to pick me,” she says. “So I’ve never had to use judo in real life, though it’s a relief to know I could. But it’s great for the figure, good for the nerves and nice to have tucked away for disasters.”
Although Blackman had few chances to show off her skills on the screen or page after Goldfinger and the book, she remained vigilant in both her own self-defense and her lifelong quest against bullying.
Her first book has just been re-edited in France :
Defend yourself in style. Self-defense manual (…) by Honor Blackman. Translated from English by Lou Vago. Le Cherche Midi, 120 pp., 15 €.
Eva Green is a French actress. She first gained recognition in the films The Dreamers (2003) and Kingdom of Heaven (2005). She achieved international fame when she starred as Vesper Lind in the 2006 James Bond movie Casino Royale. In 2007, Green was awarded the BAFTA Rising Star Award. Her other most famous films include 2012’s Dark Shadows, 2014’s 300: Rise of an Empire, 2014’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, 2019’s Dumbo and 2019’s Proxima. Green is also known for her starring roles on the television series Penny Dreadful (2014-2016), which earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama.
2023
The Three Musketeers: Milady – named after the free-spirited and devious woman imagined by Alexandre Dumas – is a film which struggles to break new ground and fails to carve out a strong presence for its female lead, once again played by Eva Green. Milady is, however, at the heart of the story, and the film sets out to unravel the knots of intrigue and mystery surrounding this woman’s identity.
Catherine Deneuve : archetypal Gallic beauty : Frenchwomen don’t get fat! They wake up with impeccable bedhead! They meet their lovers in insouciant-yet-polished ensembles… They even seem to know the secret to that most difficult thing: how to age gracefully
In a career that has spanned an astonishing 64 years, she has made over one hundred movies, and has become the epitome of the icy blonde beauty. She is a legend not just in her native France but around the world, making movies in both French and English. And at the age of 77, she is still going strong.
Deneuve’s career began at the tender age of 12 in André Hunebelle’s 1957 comedy drama Les Collégiennes in which she appeared alongside her younger sister, Sylvie Dorléac.
But it was Jacques Demy’s 1964 musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg which catapulted the then 21-year-old Deneuve to stardom. From the outset, she worked with the greats, appearing in Roman Polanski’s ground-breaking Repulsion in 1965 and in Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour in 1967, both seminal works of Sixties cinema. Belle de Jour won her a BAFTA award for Best Actress, and her awards shelf must be mighty long as the baubles have continued to pile up ever since.
She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Régis Wargnier’s Indochine, the 1998 Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for Place Vendôme and she took home Césars for The Last Metro (1980), directed by François Truffaut, and again for Indochine (1992). And we haven’t even got on to her English-language films yet, movies such as The April Fools (1969), Hustle (1975), The Hunger (1983) and The Musketeer (2001), which served to win her adoration from across the Atlantic.
Movies aside, Deneuve has also worked as a model, beloved of Yves Saint Laurent (who dressed her in numerous films, including Belle de Jour), and in the late 1970s, she became the face of Chanel No. 5. In fact, her association saw perfume sales rocket in the USA and she soon became the darling of the American press. Such was her popularity that in 1983 she was hired by American Home Products to promote their line of Youth Garde cosmetics, for which she famously proclaimed, “Take a closer look – this year I’ll be 40.” Women across the country rushed to buy in the hope of looking as good.
In 2005, she published her diaries À l’ombre de moi-même (In My Own Shadow, published in English as Close Up and Personal), allowing fans a glimpse behind the scenes of this extraordinary actress’s life. She says, by the way, that she doesn’t mind being an institution – but it’s important to remain vigilant and not rest on one’s laurels. That’s certainly not something Catherine Deneuve can be accused of so far…
The Anglo-French singer and actor Jane Birkin has died at the age of 76, the French culture ministry has announced.
The singer had been forced to postpone several concerts in Paris scheduled for May after breaking her shoulder in March 2022. This followed another string of cancelled shows after Birkin had a stroke in September 2021.
“I’ve always been a big optimist, and I realise that it still takes me a little while to be able to be on stage again and with you. I love being with you so much,” she said in a statement at the time.
She was found dead at her home in Paris, French media reported.
Birkin was born in London on 14 December 1946 to an actor mother and naval officer father. At 17, she married the James Bond composer John Barry but the marriage lasted only three years.
She catapulted to fame after starring in the 1966 film Blow-Up – which featured a scene in which Birkin appeared nude before crossing the channel in 1968 at the age of 22 to star in a satirical romantic comedy Slogan alongside the pop-poet Serge Gainsbourg, who was 18 years her senior.
It was the start of a 13-year on- and off-screen relationship that made them France’s most famous couple, in the spotlight as much for their bohemian and hedonistic lifestyle as for their work.
Despite being banned on radio in several countries and condemned by the Vatican because of its overtly sexual lyrics, their 1968 song Je t’aime … moi non plus (“I love you … me neither”) achieved worldwide success and reached No 1 in the UK singles chart.
Their relationship has been frequently described as “tumultuous”, and Birkin reportedly wrote in her 2020 diaries that there had been violence between the couple. During one of their rows, Birkin launched herself into the River Seine after throwing a custard pie in Gainsbourg’s face.
But she frequently defended the man with whom she became so closely associated, including against charges by one singer that he was a “harasser”, in an interview in the Times in 2020.
American singer and actress who was one of the best-selling musical performers of the 1980s and ’90s.
“She was the perfect combination of a vocalist with an incomparable timbre (yes, that’s subjective but I have yet to come across someone who didn’t like it) – rich and velvety with a slightly metallic and at times almost operatic-like sound to it; a large, even, well-supported and connected range; heaps of emotion and soul; a lot of power and a huge volume output; incredible vocal stamina; a well-controlled vibrato; strong and resonant belts and a full, piercing head register; and she had a host of technical skills and great musicianship that allowed her to do almost anything with her voice. And when she sang live, she was – unlike many others – able to replicate or surpass the same tone, power and range she displayed on record on stage as well. It’s no wonder she earned the simple yet self-explanatory nickname « The Voice ». From 1985 to 1991, Whitney was a force to be reckoned with, with very little in the way of a worthy contemporary rival – even Mariah Carey and Céline Dion, as brilliant as they are in their own right – could not match her in terms of power, the purity of tone, fluidity of lyrical phrasing or consistent live performances.”
Often compared to a young Catherine Deneuve, French model-turned-actress Marine Vacth made the transition from the catwalk to the red carpet appear effortless with a brave star-making performance in François Ozon’s erotic drama “Young & Beautiful” (2013). Born in Paris in 1991 to an accountant mother and lorry driver father, Vacth grew up in Bois-Colombes in the northern outskirts of the capital and was first discovered by a model agency at an H&M store aged just 14. Vacth went onto work with high-art fashion photographers such as Juergen Teller, Jean-Baptiste Mondino and Paolo Roversi and later succeeded Kate Moss to front the campaign for Yves Saint Laurent’s Parisienne. But following a shoot with French actor Vincent Cassel for the label’s La Nuit de L’Homme fragrance, Vacth became inspired to pursue an acting career and went onto land her first role as Tessa, the model girlfriend of high-flying trader Steve in Cédric Klapisch’s socially-conscious comedy “Ma part du Gâteau” (2011). Following an appearance in the promo for hip-hop jazz artist DJ Cam’s single “Swim” in the same year, Vacth played Alice in Joan Chemla’s short film adaptation of the fable “The Man With The Golden Brain” (2012) and appeared in Alexandre Arcady’s decade-spanning Algerian-based romantic drama “Ce que le jour doit à la nuit” (2012). But it was her magnetic turn as Isabelle, a middle-class teenager who baffles her family by turning to high-class prostitution for no discernible reason in François Ozon’s provocative drama “Young & Beautiful” (2013) which brought Vacth’s acting talents to a wider international audience for the first time.
Also known as leader of charting indie outfit Rilo Kiley, Jenny Lewis makes searching, twang-inflected indie pop/rock of her own as a soloist. Having had her first taste of stardom when she was a child, appearing in a series of television shows and in films, she grew disenchanted with acting and turned to music as she came of age, forming Rilo Kiley with Blake Sennett in 1998. Their work drew upon the seediness of her native San Fernando Valley and nearby Hollywood, but she began to expand her horizons in 2006 when she released a country-tinged solo debut called Rabbit Fur Coat. Rilo Kiley stuck around for another album, but Rabbit Fur Coat established Lewis as a formidable singer/songwriter in her own right, and her reputation only grew after the group split, thanks to the rustic Americana of 2008’s Acid Tongue and the slicker, retro-styled pop sheen apparent on 2014’s The Voyager. Following the hazier On the Line in 2019, part of 2023’s Joy’All consisted of songs written during a songwriting workshop led by Beck.
Born to a pair of entertainers in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 8, 1977, Lewis relocated to the San Fernando Valley as a child. Before she was ten years old she had appeared in a number of major commercials, and she wound up cast in Lucille Ball’s 1986 sitcom Life with Lucy. Guest spots in a variety of sitcoms followed in the next few years, culminating with prominent roles in two 1989 films: The Wizard and Troop Beverly Hills. Lewis acted into the mid-’90s — she wound up with recurring roles on the 1990 television show Shannon’s Deal and 1991’s Brooklyn Bridge — but after appearing in the 1998 feature film Pleasantville, she turned away from acting.
That year, Lewis formed Rilo Kiley with Sennett — the two were dating at the time — Pierre de Reeder, and Dave Rock. After releasing an eponymous EP in 1999, the group replaced Rock with Jason Boesel and released Take Offs and Landings in 2001 on Barsuk. Another indie record — The Execution of All Things, released on Saddle Creek — appeared in 2002 before the group inked a deal with Warner to distribute More Adventurous in 2004.
Just as Rilo Kiley was receiving a push from a major label, Lewis fielded an offer from Conor Oberst for his imprint Team Love. Lewis hired the Watson Twins as support for Rabbit Fur Coat, her 2006 solo debut. Greeted by positive reviews and a major media push, Rabbit Fur Coat overshadowed all previous Rilo Kiley albums, but it also wound up giving a boost to the band’s 2007 album, Under the Blacklight. Released on Warner proper, Under the Blacklight was Rilo Kiley’s most successful record — it wound up peaking at 22 on Billboard’s Top 200 — but the band splintered soon after its release. Although the official disbandment wasn’t announced until 2014, a year after the odds-and-ends collection Rkives appeared, Rilo Kiley never recorded together again.
Lewis quickly turned her attention to her solo career, recording the rousing Americana record Acid Tongue. Written in part with her new partner Johnathan Rice, Acid Tongue debuted at 24 upon its September 2008 release. Lewis next teamed with Rice for I’m Having Fun Now, a collaborative album released under the name Jenny and Johnny in 2010.
Lewis hired Ryan Adams to produce The Voyager, an album that evoked the heyday of classic AOR. The Voyager debuted at number nine upon its July 2014 release. In 2016, Lewis, Erika Forster, and Tennessee Thomas formed the trio Nice as Fuck, releasing an eponymous album in June. Lewis returned to her solo career in 2019 with the March release of On the Line, which featured co-productions by Adams, Beck, and Shawn Everett. It stalled at number 34 in the U.S. while becoming her first album to crack the Top 30 in the U.K. She next entered the studio with producer Dave Cobb (Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile) to record a group of songs written partly on the road, pre-pandemic, and partly at home in Nashville during a week-long virtual songwriting workshop hosted by Beck in early 2021. (The latter included prompts such as “write a song with only clichés” and “write in free-form style.”) With appearances from Jon Brion (Chamberlin), Greg Leisz (pedal steel, B-Bender guitar), and Lucius’ Jess Wolfe (backing vocals) in addition to a core backing band and headed by Cobb, Joy’All marked her debut on Blue Note/Capitol in June 2023. (Stephen Thomas Erlewine).
After many years of ill health, Taylor died from congestive heart failure in 2011, at the age of 79.
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in Hampstead, London, on Feb. 27, 1932, to art dealer Francis Taylor and Sara, a former stage actress. Her unique beauty inspired her mother to put her into show business, and by age 3 Elizabeth was taking ballet lessons. “I never could kick up my heels like other kids; there were too many restraints,” Taylor wrote in her 1988 memoir Elizabeth Takes Off. “My life was overscheduled and overdisciplined.”
Taylor became one of the most popular actresses of Hollywood’s golden age.
She bounded into the spotlight at age 12 after starring in the 1944 box office sensation “National Velvet.” She won acclaim as an adult with 1951’s “A Place In The Sun” and went on to score best actress Oscar nominations for “Raintree County,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” and “Suddenly, Last Summer.”
In 1963, she memorably starred in “Cleopatra.” She later won Oscars for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Butterfield 8.”
Beyond acting, Taylor is credited with bringing the world’s attention to AIDS with her fund-raising and activism. In 1985, when Taylor’s lifelong friend Rock Hudson died of AIDS, she brought national attention to the growing disease. She raised and donated millions of dollars to the cause, founding the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.
She was also an entrepreneur, spearheading a successful line of perfume and multiple jewelry lines. In 1999, Taylor was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Raquel Welch, the actor who became an icon and sex symbol thanks to films like “One Million Years B.C.” and “Three Musketeers,” died Wednesday in Los Angeles after a brief illness, her manager confirmed to Variety. She was 82.
She came onto the movie scene in 1966 with the sci-fi film “Fantastic Voyage” and the prehistoric adventure “One Million Years B.C.,” the latter of which established Welch as a sex symbol. The actor went on to appear in the controversial adaptation of Gore Vidal’s “Myra Beckrinridge,” “Kansas City Bomber” and Richard Lester’s delightful romps “The Three Musketeers” (1973), for which she won a Golden Globe, and “The Four Musketeers: Milady’s Revenge” (1974). She was one of the first women to play the lead role — not the romantic interest — in a Western, 1971 revenge tale “Hannie Caulder” — an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” (2003), according to the director.
Jo Raquel Tejada was born in Chicago to a mother who could trace her ancestry to the Mayflower and a father from Bolivia. The family moved to San Diego, where the young girl took ballet and acting lessons; as a teen she won beauty contests. Welch also did some professional modeling.
She made her screen debut as one of the call girls in Russel Rouse’s film “A House Is Not a Home” (1964). That year she also made an uncredited appearance in the Elvis Presley movie “Roustabout.”
Welch was married four times, the first to publicist and agent James Welch, her high school sweetheart, from 1959-64; the second to director-producer Patrick Curtis from 1967-72; the third to producer, director and journalist André Weinfeld from 1980-90; and the fourth to Richard Palmer.
She is survived by a son, Damon Welch, and a daughter, actor Tahnee Welch.
Sofia Helin was born on April 25, 1972 in Hovsta, Örebro län, Sweden. She is an actress and writer, known for The Bridge (2011), Arn: The Knight Templar (2007) and The Snowman (2017). She is married to Daniel Götschenhjelm. They have two children.
Daphné Patakia grew up in Belgium and graduated from the Greek National Theatre. In 2016 she was named as one of European films’ Shooting Stars by European Film Promotion. She is known for Tony Gatlif’s Djam (2017). The film premiered in 2017 Cannes Film Festival. She stars in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Nimic (2019), Paul Verhoeven’s nun drama Benedetta (2020), and OVNI film series. (2021-22)
Monica Vitti, iconic Italian actress and muse to directors Michelangelo Antonioni and Luis Buñuel, died in Rome on Wednesday after battling Alzheimer’s disease for decades. Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini mourned Vitti’s death at 90 in a news release. “Goodbye to the queen of Italian cinema,” he wrote.
Vitti captivated international audiences with her chilly, ethereal beauty when she starred in the contentious Antonioni film L’Avventura, which was lauded by British magazine Sight&Sound in 1962 as the second-greatest movie ever made after Citizen Kane. The actress continued her symbiotic relationship and romance with Antonioni when she starred in his films La Notte, L’Eclisse, and Red Desert
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