Her father was of Swedish descent and her mother was of English and German ancestry.One month before her 18th birthday, Jean landed the title role in Otto Preminger's Saint Joan (1957) after a much-publicized contest involving some 18,000 hopefuls. She also appeared in the anthology film The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers (Les plus belles escroqueries du monde, 1963) and Backfire (chappement libre, 1964), which reunited her with Jean-Paul Belmondo. Seberg assumed Eastwood was madly in love with her, too, and was ready to leave his wife. All she thought about was caring and wanting to do good. Other works. (AP Photo/Katie Callan), Actor/director Clint Eastwood poses with his wife Dina, left, actress Frances Fisher, right, and Eastwood's daughter Francesca at the premiere of his new film "True Crime" Monday, March 15, 1999, on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Calif. Fisher is also a cast member in the film, which Eastwood both directs and stars in. By 1960 Jean Seberg was a cultural icon herself in France, influencing the Parisien fashions every bit as much as Godard and Truffaut were influencing film. Seberg was Franois Truffaut's first choice for the central role of Julie in Day for Night (La Nuit amricaine, 1973), but after several fruitless attempts to contact her, he gave up and cast British actress Jacqueline Bisset instead.[31]. Eastwoods career really took off after Paint Your Wagon. In the next few years, he showed promise as a director, starring in and helming in the critically acclaimed Play Misty for Me. He also created one of the great screen anti-heroes in Dirty Harry. Over the decades, he also had three more major relationships: with co-stars Sondra Locke and Frances Fisher, and his eight-year marriage to Castro Valley native and former KSBW anchor Dina Ruiz, who is 35 years his junior. Jean Seberg. She was so misunderstood. She was buried in France. 673 The story of Jean Seberg is one that is filled with hope, achievement, and a lot of sadness. If Seberg was feeling marginalised and paranoid in her final years, you could hardly blame her given the FBI harassment, the upheaval in her private life and the alarming way her career had begun to creak. When he screamed, I would turn and tell him [sarcastically] "you know, you shouldn't screech like that, you gonna get yourself a stroke". Throughout her life, she crossed paths with filmmakers, lovers and allies, as well as enemies who cast a menacing shadow over her last days. [67], On September 8, nine days after her disappearance, Seberg's decomposing body was found wrapped in a blanket in the back seat of her Renault, parked close to her apartment in the 16th arrondissement. [37] U.S. surveillance was deployed while she was residing in France and while traveling in Switzerland and Italy. | Her name was entered by a neighbor.[17][19]. They couldnt live there anymore. Their affair created a minor scandal in Parisian society; When Seberg and Gary finally secured divorces from their respective spouses, they married discreetly and had to keep the birth of their son a secret for several years. There was a sense of frustration over talent that had never been properly fulfilled. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello), Clint Eastwood, left, and Hilary Swank speak with Eastwood's mother Ruth at the Governors Ball following the 77th Academy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 27, 2005, in Los Angeles. Jean Seberg's died at the age of 40, and her death was ruled a probable suicide by police. [61] Nina is buried at Riverside Cemetery in Marshalltown. Born. Swank also won an Oscar for best actress for her work in the film. July 17, 1962. As she put it, according to Longworth: I got a crush on someone else. Mary Beth Hurt played Seberg in a voiceover. Related Articles The media colluded with those two patriarchs, building her up and then knocking her down. She settled in Paris and continued to work in Europe. [16] Seberg had a sister, Mary-Ann, and two brothers, Kurt and David, the younger of whom was killed in a car accident at the age of 18 in 1968. In the late 1960s, Hoover's FBI targeted her because of her political and romantic involvement with civil rights activist Hakim Jamal. Had an older sister, Mary Ann (b. American actress Jean Seberg at the wheel of a sports car in her home town of Marshalltown, Iowa, March 1957. Seberg gave a memorable performance as a schizophrenic in the title role of Robert Rossen's Lilith (1964) opposite Warren Beatty and went on to appear in over 30 films in Hollywood and Europe.In the late 1960s, Seberg became involved in anti-war politics and was the target of an undercover campaign by the FBI to discredit her because of her association with several members of the Black Panther party. I've been tremendously lucky to have gone through this experience at an age where I can still learn. The system seems to be based on saving the maximum of yourself for those nearest you. By her own admission, Seberg wasnt obvious casting. Her performance in Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 film Breathless immortalized her as an icon of French New Wave cinema. Born in East Orange, N.J., she received her masters degree in film history and criticism at USC. She claimed that the stress from the false news stories caused her to go intopremature labor and give birth to a baby girl who died several days later. Happens all the time here. v), Other Works As Alistair Cooke told British listeners in one of his Letters from America broadcasts the week after her death, she took her prematurely born babys corpse back home to Iowa in a glass coffin as a glaring proof that the baby was white an excessive reaction perhaps but in 1970, she knew that the FBI could and did destroy hundreds of radicals and non radicals. Romain Gary, Seberg's second husband, called a press conference shortly after her death at which he blamed the FBI's campaign against Seberg for her death. He called their months filming Paint Your Wilderness in the enchanting Oregon wilderness a perfect life. He said she seemed happy at the time. She had prominent roles in all-star blockbusters like Airport (1970) and successfully held her own against such scene-stealers as Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon (1969). As her biographer David Richards notes, she was putting on weight, drinking too much and seemed to be in a state of permanent psychological siege. For nearly a decade, the FBI stalked and slandered Jean Seberg until her suicide in 1979 and all for supporting civil rights. (AP Photo), Oscar nominee Clint Eastwood arrives with Frances Fisher, his co-star in "Unforgiven," at the 1992 50th Annual Golden Globe Awards presentation in Beverly Hills, Ca., Jan. 24, 1993. I know that the greatest of actresses has about 20 good years of acting in her and that she will go on living for 30 or 40 years as a human being. I had no apprehension regarding him. The film was a critical and box office disaster. She was extremely sad too about it and when we all arrived on the set of Bonjour Tristesse she carried on her shoulders the weight of guilt, she was scared. I miss that casualness and friendliness of Americans, the kind that makes people smile. The second was being burned at the stake by the critics. Get Morning Report and other email newsletters, Clint Eastwood, color transparencies of him in a car with a camera in 1962. The baby died two days later on August 25, 1970, as a result of complications sustained when Seberg overdosed on sleeping pills during her pregnancy. Sebergs crime, in Hoovers eyes, was her involvement in political causes and her support of the Black Panther Party. [62] Seberg subsequently dated aspiring French filmmaker Jean-Claude Messager, who later spoke to CBS's Mike Wallace for a 1981 profile of the actress. It was marvelous while it lasted, Seberg said later, according to Longworth. If you don't know Seberg, she's a screen icon in her own right but one who died tragically by suicide at age 40 in 1979. 1 of 40. She also had a hard time getting work in Hollywood, probably because of a blacklist. [53] The child's birth and first year of life were hidden, even from close friends and relatives. When Eastwood and Seberg met while making Paint Your Wagon in 1968, both were at turning points in their lives and careers. Unfortunately, Paint Your Wagon wouldnt do a whole lot for her career. Shes most famous as the blonde American beauty sporting a boyish haircut in 1960s Breathless, Jean-Luc Goddards classic of French New Wave cinema. The film became an international success and critics praised Seberg's performance; film critic and director Franois Truffaut even hailed her as "the best actress in Europe. She wrote to Ingmar Bergman, the great Swedish director, telling him that she looked a little like Bibi Andersson, who had starred in Bergman films from The Seventh Seal (1957) to Persona (1966), and expressing her fervent desire to work with him. (AP Photo/Bob Galbraith), Actor/director Clint Eastwood gives his daughter Francesca a kiss at the premiere of his new Warner Bros. adventure film, "Space Cowboys," Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2000, in the Westwood section of Los Angeles. According to Gary, she had tried to kill herself every year on the anniversary of Ninas death. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Car derrire Momo, c'est bien Roman Kacew qui se cache, et The American stars body lay decomposing in a car on a street in Paris for 10 days before the French police discovered it. The letter is kept in Bergmans archives. [citation needed], In 1995, Mark Rappaport created a documentary about Seberg, From the Journals of Jean Seberg. (AP Photo), American actress Jean Seberg and husband Francois Moreuil arrive on Sept. 28, 1959 at London airport from Dublin after attending the Cork film festival. In particular, they were suspicious of her close links with Black Power leader, Hakim Jamal (played in the film by Anthony Mackie). His suicide note, addressed to his publisher, indicated that he had not killed himself over the loss of Seberg, but because he could no longer produce literary works.[10]. On March 12, 1972, Seberg married director Dennis Berry. In 1986, pop singer Madonna recreated Seberg's iconic Breathless look in her music video for "Papa Don't Preach," sporting a pixie blonde haircut, French striped jersey shirt and black capri pants in the style of Seberg's character in Breathless. "Seberg: Real-life Cinderella" by Peer J. Oppenheimer. A casual phone call with Black Panther leader Elaine Brown brought her to the attention of the FBI. Charles Champlin. That, though, was the period before Hoover and the FBI set about destroying her just as surely as Otto Preminger had tried to create her as a star in the late Fifties in the first place. She's most famous as the blonde American beauty sporting a boyish. Ex-husband Gary assumed responsibility for the pregnancy, but Seberg acknowledged that Ornelas was the father. [30] Seberg also starred in the ensemble disaster film Airport (1970), which drew mixed reviews but was a huge success at the box office. Seberg was drawn to the Black Panthers because of their free breakfast programs for children, but her involvement led to government surveillance, beginning in 1969. [20] The film generated a great deal of publicity, but Seberg commented that she was "embarrassed by all the attention. She left in 2016. FBI files show that she was wiretapped, and in 1980, the Los Angeles Times published logs of her Swiss wiretapped phone calls. Susan King is a former entertainment writer at the Los Angeles Times who specialized in Classic Hollywood stories. Godard and Claude Chabrol were equally smitten with her. In February and March 1966, she starred in Line of Demarcation, filmed around Dole, Jura,[28] and in May and June 1967, she played the lead role in the French-Italian Eurospy film The Road to Corinth, shot in Greece.[29]. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? [69], In December 1980, Seberg's former husband Romain Gary committed suicide. Though she and Gary divorced in 1970, they remained close and even lived across from each other in the same apartment building. I dont know how deep the friendship went, said Ladd. United States Senate, April 23, 1976. Jean Seberg on a phone call during the filming of Joan of Arc, directed by Otto Preminger, in 1957, in London, Kristen Stewart as Jean Seberg in Benedict Andrewss film Seberg, Seberg and Jean-PaulBelmondo in Jean-LucGodards Breathless, Seberg as the beautiful schizophrenic who starred opposite Warren Beatty and Peter Fonda in Lillith (1964) (Glasshouse/Rex), As a biopic about the troubled actor arrives in UK cinemas,Geoffrey Macnablooks back at one of the strangest and most contradictory film careers of the postwar years, Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in, Please refresh your browser to be logged in, A reminder of just how unsettling Polanski still is. Eastwood won an Oscars for best director and best motion picture of the year for his work on "Million Dollar Baby." [11][12][13] Her family was Lutheran and of Swedish, English, and German ancestry. Gary stated that Seberg had repeatedly attempted suicide on the anniversary of the child's death, August 25. She appeared as the female lead in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (French title: bout de souffle, 1960) as Patricia, co-starring with Jean-Paul Belmondo. 1936) and two younger brothers, Kurt (b. Although Seberg initially claimed, Met Carlos Navarra, her daughter's father, while filming. "Jean Seberg: A Hollywood tragedy", p. 40 Coates-Smith, Michael & McGee, Garry, FBI Secrets: An Agent's Expose. T he circumstances of Jean Seberg 's death 40 years ago in late August 1979 were squalid and pathetic. Born in Marshalltown, Iowa, US, she began her film career when she was nineteen. I'm not an expatriate. From the FBIs point of view, she was involved in radical politics, had contributed financially to the Black Panthers and was therefore fair game. She was relieved to receive the offer for Paint Your Wagon, according to Karina Longworth, the host of the You Must Remember This podcast. The circumstances of Jean Sebergs death 40 years ago in late August 1979 were squalid and pathetic. Jean Seberg spent the 1960s as an internationally recognized actress, an icon of French cinema's New Wave and one of the chicest women in Hollywood, or New York, or Paris. Was considered for one of the two female leads in. During the long shoot, Jeanamused herself by having an affair with Clint Eastwood, Longworth said. Barcelona, Spain. Cointelpro: The FBI's Covert Action Programs Against American Citizens, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities. This symbol of the New Wave would now in star in one of the films synonymous with the dinosaurs of the studio system, limping into extinction, Longworth said. These newspaper reports make clear that Seberg was well aware of the surveillance. [37], In 1970, the FBI created a false story from a San Francisco-based informant that the child whom Seberg was carrying was not fathered by her husband, Romain Gary, but by Raymond Hewitt, a member of the Black Panther Party. [13][14][15], Her paternal grandfather, Edward Carlson, arrived in the U.S. in 1882 and observed, "there are too many Carlsons in the New World." ' Comments: (319 . [10], Seberg was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, the daughter of Dorothy Arline (ne Benson), a substitute teacher, and Edward Waldemar Seberg, a pharmacist. "Jean Seberg Failed As Saint On Screen, Scores Success In France As A Sinner" by Bob Thomas. Without a man, she said, Im like a ship without a rudder.'. Its always a bit of a shock that people arent sincere. Eastwood wasnt yet known for Dirty Harry, and his Academy Award-winning Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby were decades off. Perhaps I have to grow up a little.. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File), Jean Seberg at a press conference in Rome, Italy in 1969, (AP Photo).