Juliette Greco

Born on February 7, 1927 in Montpellier,  Juliette Gréco was the daughter of a police commissioner, and a Jew who miraculously escaped concentration camps when the Nazis occupied France. At the end of World War II she tried to succeed as a stage actress, but since she had no luck, she followed the advice of Jean-Paul Sartre, who advised her to dedicate herself to singing. In a short time she had triumphed in the Parisian cabaret Le boeuf sur le toit, and later she swept her disco “Je hais les dimanches” with her. In her Parisian neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés she interacts with the aforementioned Sartre, Albert Camus and Boris Vian, main champions of existentialism in France. Apparently, the latter became her lover, but she also had affairs with the jazz musician Miles Davis, whom she was about to marry.

Regarding the Seventh Art, the filmmaker  Julien Duvivier gave her an important role in Au royaume des cieux , from 1949, and Jean Cocteau in Orfeo , from 1950. With these works, she caught the attention of Hollywood, which signed her for various films, as Fiesta (1957), The roots of heaven (1958), Good morning sadness (1958) and The night of the generals  (1966). In the mid-70s she decided to retire from the screen, and would only return in 2001, for a cameo, as a woman who appeared in a cement yard, in The Pharaoh’s Mask (2001), and to play the protagonist of the drama Jedermanns Fest . (2002). 

In 1956 Juliette Gréco divorced the actor Philippe Lemaire , with whom she had her only daughter, Laurence Lemaire, who is dedicated to cinema, as a script. She was close to another interpreter, Michel Piccoli , and to the musician Gérard Jouannest, who accompanied her until her death in 2016.