Simone Signoret(1921 — 1985)
Simone Signoret
France
8 min read
French actress and writer (1921–1985), Simone Signoret was the first French actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for Room at the Top (1959). An icon of postwar cinema, she was equally recognized for her political activism and her memoirs.
Famous Quotes
« Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. »
Key Facts
- 1921: born in Wiesbaden as Simone Kaminker
- 1952: iconic role in Casque d'or directed by Jacques Becker
- 1959: Academy Award for Best Actress for Room at the Top — the first French actress to win this award
- 1976: publication of her memoirs Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be
- 1985: death in Autheuil-Authouillet
Works & Achievements
A film by Jacques Becker in which Signoret plays Marie, a femme fatale in Belle Époque Paris. A masterpiece of classic French cinema, the film brought her lasting national and international recognition.
A thriller by Henri-Georges Clouzot, adapted from the Boileau-Narcejac novel, in which she stars opposite Véra Clouzot. A worldwide success, the film opened the doors of international cinema to her and influenced Alfred Hitchcock himself.
A British film by Jack Clayton for which Signoret won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1960. She plays Alice Aisgill, a mature woman in love with an ambitious young man, with an intensity that stunned American critics.
A film by Jean-Pierre Melville about the French Resistance, based on Joseph Kessel's novel. Signoret plays Mathilde, a figure of the internal Resistance, in a restrained film free of artificial heroism now considered a masterpiece.
A film by Moshe Mizrahi, adapted from Romain Gary's novel 'The Life Before Us' (published under the pen name Émile Ajar). Signoret plays Rosa, a former deportee who becomes a childminder in the Belleville neighbourhood. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and earned her an ovation from international critics.
An autobiography published by Le Seuil, translated into some twenty languages, in which Signoret recounts with humor and candor her childhood, career, political commitments, and life with Montand. A valuable document on the cultural and political history of twentieth-century France.
Anecdotes
In April 1960, Simone Signoret became the first French actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her role in “Room at the Top.” She beat rivals including Doris Day, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor. In France, the news made the front page of every newspaper: a European actress had just conquered Hollywood.
In 1956, Signoret and her husband Yves Montand embarked on a tour of the Soviet Union, invited by Khrushchev. It was during this trip that Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian uprising. The couple found themselves in a difficult position, criticized in France for not canceling the tour, even though they publicly condemned the intervention.
In September 1960, Simone Signoret signed the “Manifesto of the 121,” a declaration by intellectuals asserting the right to insubordination during the Algerian War. This act came at a cost: some of her work was censored on state radio and television, and she was summoned by the authorities. She never regretted signing it.
Her autobiography, “Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be” (1976), became an unexpected bestseller, translated into some twenty languages. The title, a twist on a phrase attributed to American baseball legend Yogi Berra, sums up with irony her view of a bygone era. The book reveals a woman who was clear-eyed, funny, and unsparingly honest about herself.
Near the end of her life, Signoret starred in “Madame Rosa” (1977), playing a former concentration camp survivor who becomes a childminder in a working-class Paris neighborhood. The film, adapted from Romain Gary’s novel, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Her performance, deeply moving, was hailed as one of the greatest of her career, long after her Hollywood glory years.
Primary Sources
I am not nostalgic by nature. But sometimes I find myself remembering a time when things seemed simpler — not because they were, but because we were younger and believed we could change them.
The patients I met in that hospital taught me something essential: dignity is not a matter of health, or age, or even lucidity. It is a decision one makes every morning.
We respect and consider justified the refusal to take up arms against the Algerian people. We respect and consider justified the conduct of those French citizens who deem it their duty to provide aid and protection to Algerians oppressed in the name of the French people.
I can't believe it. I was so certain that one of the others would get it that I almost didn't prepare anything.
Key Places
Birthplace of Simone Kaminker on March 25, 1921, where her father, a military officer, was stationed at the time. The family quickly returned to France, and Wiesbaden would remain nothing more than a birthplace on a passport.
Signoret and Montand lived for many years in a legendary apartment on Place Dauphine, which became a literary and political salon frequented by Picasso, Prévert, Sartre, and many committed artists.
Signoret filmed several movies in Hollywood during the 1960s, including *Ship of Fools* (1965). It was in Hollywood that she received her Academy Award in 1960, at the ceremony held at the Music Center.
A landmark of French artistic and intellectual life in the 1950s–1970s, where Signoret and Montand loved to stay. The inn *La Colombe d'Or*, whose walls are adorned with works donated by artists, was a gathering place for figures such as Prévert, Matisse, and Chagall.
A Norman village where Signoret and Montand owned a country home, "Le Colombier." Signoret spent her final years there and died on September 30, 1985. She is buried in the local cemetery.