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| Birth Name(s) : Jean Seberg |
Date of Birth: November 13, 1938 |
| Status:
Married
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Partner:
Ahmed Hasmi |
| Profession:
Actor |
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Full Jean Seberg Biography
It should have been a great American success story: Small-town girl wins the leading role in a major motion picture and rockets to overnight stardom. Anyway, part of it's true. Seberg was an Iowa University student who longed to be a movie star, tried out for and won the lead (beating out a reported 18,000 applicants) in Otto Preminger's Saint Joan (1957). The attendant publicity was voluminous, but the picture flopped. She got a more colorful, and disturbing, role as the manipulative teenage temptress in Preminger's Bonjour Tristesse (1958), and followed that with a lead in Jean-Luc Godard's seminal New Wave picture, Breathless (1959).
Petite and pert, the elfin Seberg projected definite star quality, but the public-at least, the American publicwasn't buying. She remained in Europe and enjoyed a moderately successful film career there, including two films with Claude Chabrol, La Ligne de demarcation (1966) and The Road to Corinth (1967), returning to the U.S. during the late 1960s. Back in Paris, Seberg, who was married to director François Moreuil and novelist-cum-filmmaker Romain Gary, was found dead under mysterious circumstances. It was later suggested that the unstable, emotionally fragile characters she sometimes played (most effectively in 1964's Lilith might have reflected more of the offscreen Seberg than audiences could have suspected. |
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Additional Jean Seberg Biography
Jean Seberg (November 13, 1938 – September 8, 1979) was an American actress. She starred in 34 films in Hollywood and in France. Seberg became even more of an icon after her roles in numerous French films and the tragedy of her turbulent life.
Seberg was born in Marshalltown, Iowa to Edward Seberg and Dorothy Benson. Her family background was Lutheran.
Seberg 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 secured the role after being chosen from 18,000 hopeful actresses. The young Seberg was then thrust into the glaring spotlight and subject of countless Cinderella stories. Expectations were high. When the film was released, reviews were generally mediocre, praising Jean's fresh beauty, but finding her in over her head playing Joan. Preminger never came to her defense. 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). Seberg 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, but her voice was dubbed. She was one of the many stars in the 1970 disaster film, Airport.
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. She was not yet 41 years old when she died. Her second husband, Romain Gary, with whom she had a son, Alexandre Diego Gary, also committed suicide a year after her death.Grave of Jean Seberg
Mexican author Carlos Fuentes' novel Diana, The Goddess Who Hunts Alone (1994) is a fictionalized account of an alleged affair with Seberg, although it has not been proven whether the claims of the adulterous liaison - as both were married to others at the supposed time- is fact or just a flight of fancy. In 1995, a documentary of her life was made by Mark Rappaport, titled From the Journals of Jean Seberg. Mary Beth Hurt played Seberg in a voice-over. Coincidentally, Hurt was also born in Marshalltown, Iowa, in 1946, and attended the same high school as Seberg. Seberg was for a short time Hurt's babysitter. A musical, Jean Seberg, by librettist Julian Barry, composer Marvin Hamlisch, and lyricist Christopher Adler, based on Seberg's life, 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. The British band, The Divine Comedy, make reference to 'Little Jean Seberg' in their song titled "Absent Friends".
In 2004, the French author Alain Absire published Jean S., a fictionalised biography. Seberg's son Alexandre Diego Gary brought a lawsuit unsuccessfully attempting to stop publication.
Marshalltown, Iowa hardcore band Modern Life is War dedicates the song "Pendulum" from their 2007 release Midnight in America to Jean Seberg, with lyrics apparently pertaining to her life. |
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Jean Seberg Quote(s)
| My first marriage was not happy. I married him because I was impressed that he knew which wines to order and how to leave his visiting card. Ridiculous reasons. |
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