Ludivine Sagnier : Ludivine Sagnier (born July 3, 1979) is a French actress and model, La Celle-Saint-Cloud, in the Yvelines département; her mother is a retired secretary and her father is an English professor at a Paris university.She started taking acting classes at a young age and had her film debut at age 10 in Je veux rentrer a la maison and Les maris, les femmes, les amants. In 2001, she was named one of the Shooting Stars by European Film Promotion. Sagnier performed in two films in competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, La Petite Lili and Swimming Pool, both released in the same year. Also in 2003, she won the Prix Romy Schneider.
Sagnier has appeared nude in extended scenes in several films, including Swimming Pool, La Petite Lili, Water Drops on Burning Rocks, and Bon plan. Addressing this issue, Sagnier told Playboy: "I'm much more confident in front of a camera, hidden by a character, enhanced by makeup, so I can go much further than I can in real life. Sexual acting is painful, because even though you're pretending, you have the skin of the person in front of you, and it's not the skin you wish you had. After that, you run into the shower to get rid of everything".[2] She also starred in P. J. Hogan's 2003 adaptation of Peter Pan, as Tinkerbell.
Brigitte Bardot : Brigitte Bardot (born 28 September 1934) is a French actress, former fashion model, singer and animal welfare/rights activist. In 2007 she was named among Empire's 100 Sexiest Film Stars.
In her early life Bardot was an aspiring ballet dancer. She started her acting career in 1952 and after appearing in 17 films became world-famous due to her role in controversial film And God Created Woman. During her career in show business Bardot starred in 48 films, performed in numerous musical shows, recorded 80 songs. After her retirement from the entertainment industry in the 1973, Bardot established herself as an animal rights activist. During the 1990s she became outspoken in her criticism of immigration, interracial relationships, Islam in France and homosexuality, and has been convicted five times for "inciting racial hatred".
Career : Although the European film industry was then in its ascendancy, Bardot was one of the few European actresses to receive mass media attention in the United States. She and Marilyn Monroe were perhaps the foremost examples of female sexuality in films of the 1950s and 1960s, and whenever she made public appearances in the United States the media hordes covered her every move.
Brigitte Bardot debuted in a 1952 comedy film Le Trou Normand (English title: Crazy for Love). In the same year she married Roger Vadim. From 1952 to 1956 she appeared in seventeen films; in 1953 playing a part in Jean Anouilh's stageplay "L'Invitation au château" ("The Invitation to the Castle"). She received media attention when she attended the Cannes Film Festival in April 1953. "She is every man's idea of the girl he'd like to meet in Paris," wrote the film-critic Ivon Addams in 1955.
Her films of the early and mid 1950s were generally lightweight romantic dramas, some of them historical, in which she was cast as ingénue or siren, and often with an element of undress. She played bit parts in three English-language films, the British comedy Doctor at Sea (1955), Helen of Troy (1954), in which she was understudy for the title role but only appears as Helen's handmaid, and Act of Love (1954) with Kirk Douglas. Her French-language films were dubbed for international release.
Personal Life : On 21 December 1952, at the age of 18, Bardot married director Roger Vadim. In order to receive permission from Bardot's parents to marry her, Vadim, originally an Orthodox Christian, was urged to convert to Catholicism. They divorced five years later, but remained friends and collaborated in later work. Bardot had an affair with her And God Created Woman co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant (who at that time was married to French actress Stephane Audran) followed by her divorce from Vadim. [8][9] The two lived together for about two years. Their relationship was complicated by Trintignant's frequent absence due to military service and Bardot's affair with musician Gilbert Bécaud, and was eventually ended.[8]
The 9 February 1958 edition of the Los Angeles Times reported on the front page that Bardot was recovering in Italy from a reported nervous breakdown. A suicide attempt with sleeping pills two-days earlier was denied by her public relations manager. [10].
On 18 June 1959 she married actor Jacques Charrier, by whom she had her only child, a son, Nicolas-Jacques Charrier (born 11 January 1960). To Bardot this was an undesirable pregnancy which she once compared to having a tumor growing within her. After she and Charrier divorced in 1962, Nicolas was raised in the Charrier family and did not maintain close contact with Bardot until his adulthood.
Charlotte Rampling : Charlotte Rampling, OBE (born February 5, 1946) is a highly acclaimed, European Film Award and Honorary Cesar Award-winning English actress. Her career spans four decades and delves into French and Italian cinema.
Career : After beginning her career at age seventeen in a commercial role and as a model, Rampling's first screen appearance was uncredited as a water skier in Richard Lester's film The Knack...and How to Get It in 1965, which was followed a year later by the role of Meredith in the film Georgy Girl. After this, her acting career blossomed in both English and French cinema.
Young Rampling was sexy in a lithe, boyish way favoured by the times. Despite an early flurry of success, she told The Independent, "We weren't happy. It was a nightmare, breaking the rules and all that. Everyone seemed to be having fun, but they were taking so many drugs they wouldn't know it anyway."
Rampling has often performed controversial roles. In 1969, in Luchino Visconti's The Damned (La Caduta degli dei), she played a young wife sent to a concentration camp. This role redrew Rampling entirely as mysterious, tragic, even sinister. "The Look" as co-star Dirk Bogarde called it, became her trademark. In 1974's The Night Porter she portrayed a former concentration camp inmate entangled in a sado-masochistic relationship with her former guard, played by Bogarde.
The actress gained recognition from American audiences in 1975's detective story Farewell, My Lovely and later with Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980) and particularly in The Verdict, an acclaimed drama directed by Sidney Lumet that starred Paul Newman.
Rampling credits François Ozon with drawing her back to film in the 2000s, a period when she came to terms with the death of her oldest sister Sarah, who, after giving birth prematurely in 1966, committed suicide at 23. "I thought that after such a long time of not letting her be with me," she told The Guardian, "I would like to bring her back into my life." The character she played in Ozon's Swimming Pool (2003), Sarah Morton, was named after Sarah. For most of Rampling's life, she would say only that her sister had died of a brain hemorrhage; when she and her father heard the news, they agreed they would never let Charlotte's mother know the truth. They kept their secret until Rampling's mother died in 2001.
At 59, Rampling acted in Laurent Cantet's Heading South (Vers le Sud), a 2005 film about female sexual tourism. She plays Ellen, a professor of French literature and single Englishwoman, who holidays in 1970s Haiti to get the sexual attention she does not get at home.
Personal Life : In 1972, Rampling married actor Bryan Southcombe. They lived in a ménage à trois with a male model, Randall Laurenceand had one child, Barnaby, before divorcing in 1976. Barnaby Southcombe is now a successful television director. In 1978, she married French composer Jean Michel Jarre and had a son, magician David Jarre. She also raised stepdaughter Émilie Jarre, now a fashion designer. The marriage was publicly dissolved in 1997 when she found out via tabloid newspaper stories about Jarre's affairs with other women and had a nervous breakdown. She has been engaged to Jean-Noël Tassez, a French communications tycoon, since 1998.
Eva Green : Eva Gaëlle Green[born July 5, 1980) is a French actress, raised in Paris and living partly in London. She has been noted by Vogue for her "killer looks, intelligence and modesty",and described by The Independent as "gothic, quirky, and sexy".
The daughter of actress Marlène Jobert, Green performed in theatre before making her film debut in The Dreamers (2003), which generated controversy over her numerous nude scenes. She achieved greater fame for her parts in Kingdom of Heaven (2005), and in the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale, for which she won a BAFTA. She has also modeled for numerous brands. Eva Green was born in Paris, France, the daughter of French actress Marlène Jobert and Swedish dentist Walter Green. Green has a fraternal twin sister named Joy, who was born two minutes earlier than her.Green described her family as "bourgeois",and that her sister is very different from her. Green is a natural blonde; she only went brunette during her teens. French-Swedish actress Marika Green is her aunt.
Career : At 17,Green enrolled at Eva St. Paul Drama School in Paris for three years, and then spent 10 weeks at Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London.Green stated that at drama school, "I always picked the really evil roles. It's a great way to deal with your everyday emotions."Green trained at Tisch School of the Arts in New York City,before she returned to Paris, where she performed in several plays. Green was nominated for a Molière Award award for her performance in Jalousie en Trois Fax.
Director Bernardo Bertolucci discovered Green in 2002, and found her "so beautiful, it's indecent". She accepted his invitation to star in The Dreamers (2003), despite her parents' initial objections because of Maria Schneider's accounts of being traumatized while filming Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris.Green performed extensive nude scenes, which she said felt natural on set, although she was embarrassed when her family saw the film.In addition to performing, Green was also credited with writing the score. Her performance was well received, with some comparing her to Liv Tyler.Green expressed surprise when a minute was cut from the film for the American market, as "there is so much violence, both on the streets and on the screen. They think nothing of it. Yet I think they are frightened by sex."Green followed up The Dreamers with Arsène Lupin (2004), in the light-hearted part of a love interest which she said she had fun playing, even though she generally prefers more complex parts.
Personal Life : Green considers herself nerdy: "When people first meet me, they find me very cold. I keep myself at a distance, and I think that's why I'm so drawn to [acting]. It allows me to wear a mask."She moved to Primrose Hill, London in mid-2005, She prefers the "village-like" atmosphere of the London neighbourhood: "I feel more centred when I'm [there]."She lives alone, jokingly referring to her border terrier, Griffin, as her "husband".She is an atheist, having not been raised to follow any religion.She is currently dating New Zealand actor Marton Csokas, whom she met on the set of Kingdom of Heaven.She has no particular fitness regime, as, "I'm French and I'm lazy, which means I smoke and I don't exercise",though she does run and practises pilates. Green finds dieting too stressful.She thinks of herself as an international actress: she can speak both her native French and English fluently,and is also learning Japanese as well as perfecting an American accent.
Faye Dunaway : Dorothy Faye Dunaway (born January 14, 1941), known as Faye Dunaway, is an American actress. Over the course of her career Dunaway has starred in a variety of films, from blockbusters such as The Towering Inferno and the camp classic Mommie Dearest, to the most critically acclaimed including Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown and Network. She received Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for her performances in Bonnie and Clyde and Chinatown, before winning the category with her 1976 performance in Network.
Dunaway was born in Bascom, Florida, the daughter of Grace April (née Smith), a homemaker, and John MacDowell Dunaway, Jr., a career army officer. She attended the University of Florida,Florida State University,and Boston University, but graduated from the University of Florida in theater. In 1962, Dunaway joined the American National Theater and Academy.
Career : Dunaway appeared on Broadway in 1962 as the daughter of Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons. Her first screen role was in 1967 in "The Happening." In 1967 she was in Hurry Sundown, but that same year, she got the leading female role in Bonnie and Clyde (opposite Warren Beatty) which earned her an Oscar nomination. She also starred in 1968 with Steve McQueen in the caper film The Thomas Crown Affair (and had a small role in the 1999 remake with Pierce Brosnan).
Dunaway being interviewed by Army Archerd on the red carpet at the 60th Annual Academy Awards, April 11, 1988.
It was in the 1970s that she began to stretch her acting muscles in such films as Three Days of the Condor, Little Big Man, Chinatown, The Three/Four Musketeers, Eyes of Laura Mars and Network, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress as the scheming TV executive Diana Christensen.
In the 1980s, although her performances did not waver, the parts grew less compelling. Dunaway would later blame Mommie Dearest (1981) for ruining her career as a leading lady. Critics panned the movie, and audiences didn't like it either, but in later years it would become a cult classic. "I was too good at Crawford," she was often quoted as saying.[citation needed] It can also be said that the dawn of Meryl Streep's reign as queen of dramatic cinema played a role in Dunaway's decline. She played an alcoholic in Barfly (opposite Mickey Rourke). In a later movie, Don Juan DeMarco (1995), Dunaway co-starred with Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando.
Dunaway won an Emmy for a 1994 role as a murderer in "It's All in the Game," an episode of the long-running mystery series Columbo.
She is a three-time Oscar nominee for Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown and Network, winning for the latter. She has won three Golden Globes, including for the television films Ellis Island (1984) and Gia (1998), and has been nominated for a Golden Globe 10 times.
In 1996, she toured nationally with the stage play "Master Class". The story about opera singer Maria Callas was very powerful and well received. Dunaway bought the rights to the Terrence McNally play, for possible film development.
Personal Life : Romantically linked to a series of men ranging from the comedian Lenny Bruce to actor Marcello Mastroianni, Dunaway has been married twice. Her first husband, from 1974 until 1979, was Peter Wolf, the lead singer of the rock group the J. Geils Band. Her second, from 1984 until 1987, was Terry O'Neill, a British photographer; they had one child, Liam O'Neill (born 1980). In 2003, however, O'Neill revealed that his son with Dunaway was adopted, not biological, though the actress had long maintained the opposite.
Dunaway is a Roman Catholic.....
Nastassja Kinski : Nastassja Kinski (born Nastassja Aglaia Nakszynski, January 24, 1961) is a German actress, who appeared in more than 60 international movies. Her starring roles include her Golden Globe Award-winning portrayal of 'Tess Durbeyfield' in Roman Polanski's film Tess, her roles in two erotic films (Stay As You Are and Cat People), and her parts in Wim Wenders' films The Wrong Move, Paris, Texas, and Faraway, So Close!. During the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Kinski was widely regarded as an international sex symbol.
Born in Berlin, Kinski is the daughter of the late German actor Klaus Kinski from his marriage to actress Ruth Brigitte Tocki. Her parents divorced in 1968. Kinski rarely saw her father after the age of 10. Kinski and her mother struggled financially.[1] They eventually lived in a commune in Munich.
Career : Kinski's career began in Germany where she started as a model. At 13, the German New Wave actress Lisa Kreuzer placed her in the role of the dumb Mignon in Wim Wenders' film The Wrong Move. In her mid-teens she starred in the British Hammer Film Productions' horror film To the Devil a Daughter (1976). Kinski has gained notoriety through nude appearances in these films while still a minor. This is linked to controversy as to the year of her birth, apparently reported to American authorities as 1959, although German records show 1961. (Variety states 1960.) She has stated that, as a child, she felt exploited by the industry and told a journalist from W Magazine, "If I had had somebody to protect me or if I had felt more secure about myself, I would not have accepted certain things. Nudity things. And inside it was just tearing me apart".
Kinski starred in the erotic film Stay as you are (1978) with Marcello Mastroianni. New Line Cinema released it in the United States in December 1979, helping Kinski to get more recognition there. Time Magazine said: "Kinski is simply ravishing, genuinely sexy and high-spirited without being painfully aggressive about it."
At 15 Kinski began a romantic relationship with director Roman Polanski, 28 years her senior. Polanski urged her to study acting with Lee Strasberg in the United States and cast her in his film, Tess (1979). In 1981, photographer Richard Avedon photographed Kinski with a serpent coiled around her naked body.
In 1982 Kinski appeared in the Francis Ford Coppola/Dean Tavoularis collaboration One from the Heart, which bankrupted Coppola's American Zoetrope studio. In 1982 she made Cat People, and then Unfaithfully Yours, and The Hotel New Hampshire, a critical and commercial failure. Critics praised her in Paris, Texas, which won awards at Cannes; In the U.S., however, the film was not widely released. Kinski then split her time between Europe and the United States, making Moon in the Gutter (1983), Harem (1985) and Torrents of Spring (1989) in the former, and Exposed (1983), Maria's Lovers (1984) and Revolution (1985) in the latter. Kinski's luck turned in the 1990s when she appeared in films such as Terminal Velocity opposite Charlie Sheen, and Mike Figgis' critically acclaimed One Night Stand.
Appearances of note have included Martin Donovan's Somebody Is Waiting (1996), Neil LaBute's Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), John Landis' Susan's Plan (1998), Chris Menges' The Lost Son (1999), Michael Winterbottom's The Claim (2000), and David Lynch's Inland Empire (2006).
Personal Life : In the mid-1980s Kinski met Egyptian filmmaker Ibrahim Moussa. They married on September 10, 1984. They raised son Aljosha (born June 29, 1984) and daughter Sonja Leila, now a model (born March 2, 1986). The marriage was dissolved in 1992. From 1991 until 1997 Kinski lived with musician Quincy Jones. On February 9, 1993, their daughter, Kenya Julia Miambi Sara, was born.
Kinski speaks German, English, French, Italian and Russian fluently. She is a vegetarian and suffers from mild narcolepsy.
Melanie Griffith : Melanie Griffith (born August 9, 1957) is an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe Award-winning American film actor. She is the daughter of Tippi Hedren and the wife of actor Antonio Banderas.
At age 14, Griffith began dating 22-year old actor Don Johnson who co-starred with her mother in the 1973 film, The Harrad Experiment, in which Griffith was an extra. Griffith was 18 years old when she married him in Las Vegas in January 1976. However, they divorced six months later.
A very negative view of Griffith is given in former best friend Tatum O'Neal's autogiography, A Paper Life, in which O'Neal claims Griffith had once dragged her into an opium-filled orgy and that she had caught her father Ryan O'Neal having sex with a teenage Griffith in the 1970s.
In September 1981, Griffith married Steven Bauer, her co-star in the TV film She's in the Army Now. They had a son, Alexander, in 1985, but divorced in 1987. Griffith later admitted to having problems with cocaine and liquor after her divorce from Bauer. "What I did was drink myself to sleep at night," she said. "If I wasn't with someone, I was an unhappy girl."[10] While on the set of Working Girl, she reconciled with Don Johnson. At Johnson's insistence, Griffith checked into rehab and became sober.[11] They remarried in 1989 and had a daughter, Dakota Johnson, on October 4, 1989. Six years later, she left him because of his own substance-abuse problems. She later reconciled with him, only to leave him again, this time for her leading man Antonio Banderas from the film Two Much. She finalized her divorce from Johnson in February 1996, and married Banderas on May 14, 1996. Their daughter, Stella Banderas, was born on September 24, 1996. In 2000, Griffith had Banderas' first name tattooed on her right shoulder.
Griffith's daughter Dakota Johnson followed in her mother's footsteps and served as Miss Golden Globe at the 2006 Golden Globe Awards ceremony. Griffith herself was Miss Golden Globe in 1975, a title given as a launching pad to celebrity off-spring breaking into show business.
In 2002, Griffith and Banderas received the Stella Adler Angel Award for their extensive charity work.
Lisa Bonet : Lisa Bonet (born November 16, 1967) is an Emmy Award-nominated American actress. She is best known for portraying the character of Denise Huxtable on The Cosby Show and its spinoff A Different World.
Bonet was born Lisa Michelle Bonet in San Francisco, California. Her African American father, Allen, was an opera singer, and her Jewish American mother, Arlene, was a teacher. Bonet attended Reseda High School in Reseda, California, and Celluloid Actor's Studio in North Hollywood where she majored in acting.
Career : After appearing in guest spots on television series as a child, Bonet landed the role of Denise Huxtable on The Cosby Show alongside Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashād, among others. In 1987, she left The Cosby Show to star in her own series, A Different World. That year, Bonet accepted the role of Epiphany Proudfoot in the movie Angel Heart opposite Mickey Rourke, directed by Alan Parker. Her appearance caused controversy and some scenes had to be cut to avoid an X rating.After announcing her pregnancy during the run of A Different World, Bonet left the series.The following year, she returned to The Cosby Show, but was fired in 1991 for "creative differences".
After The Cosby Show, Bonet began to accept jobs on straight-to-video releases and made-for-TV movies. In 1998 she had a supporting role in Enemy of the State with Will Smith. In 2000, she appeared in the movie High Fidelity. In 2003, she played the role of Queenie in Biker Boyz which reunited her with former co-star Kadeem Hardison of A Different World.
In August 2006, Bonet appeared in a week-long A Different World reunion special that aired on Nick at Nite, along with fellow co-stars Hardison, Jasmine Guy, Cree Summer, Dawnn Lewis, Darryl M. Bell, and Sinbad. That same year, Bonet co-starred in the 2006 film Whitepaddy, alongside Sherilyn Fenn, Hill Harper, Debra Wilson, Karen Black, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
In Fall 2008, Bonet made her return to television in the ABC drama, Life on Mars.
Personal Life : On her 20th birthday, she eloped with singer Lenny Kravitz in Las Vegas. Bonet recalled of their relationship :
"It was interesting when we were first finding out about each other, that our backgrounds were so similar. When I first told him my mom was Jewish, and he said 'So's my dad,' I thought that was both unusual and enchanting. I felt like, 'Okay, here's someone who really knows how it is.' And I think I trusted him a little more with my feelings and let him inside a little more than I ordinarily would have. "
She gave birth to daughter Zoë Isabella on December 1, 1988. She and Kravitz separated and eventually divorced in 1993.
It was around this time (1992) that Bonet legally changed her name to Lilakoi Moon, although she still uses the name Lisa Bonet for her entertainment career.
In 2007, Bonet gave birth to her second child, daughter Lola Iolani Momoa. This is her first child with Jason Momoa, an actor noted for his roles in the television shows Baywatch and Stargate Atlantis.
In October 2008, Bonet announced she is expecting her third child, her second child with Momoa.
Jean Seberg : Jean Dorothy 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 and eventual suicide.
Career : Seberg was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, the daughter of Dorothy (née Benson), a substitute teacher, and Edward Seberg, who was a druggist. Her family was Lutheran and had Swedish ancestry.
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 actresses. The young Seberg was then thrust into the glaring spotlight and subject of countless Cinderella stories. Expectations were high. Reviews of the film were generally mediocre, praised Seberg's beauty, and found her in over her head playing Joan. Preminger never came to her defense. Seberg also appeared in the 1959 Peter Sellers comedy, The Mouse that Roared, made in the UK.
However, her iconic status[vague] comes from her role as Patricia in Jean-Luc Godard's classic work of New Wave cinema, Breathless (original French title: À bout de souffle), in which she co-starred with Jean-Paul Belmondo. In 1969, she appeared in her first and only musical film, Paint Your Wagon, based on Lerner and Loewe's stage musical, but her singing voice was dubbed. She was one of the many stars in the 1970 disaster film, Airport.
Personal Life : During the latter part of the 1960s, Seberg used her high-profile image to voice support for the NAACP and supported Native American school groups such as the Mesquaki Bucks at the Tama settlement near her home town of Marshalltown, for whom she purchased $500 worth of basketball uniforms. She also supported the Black Panther Party.Though she had done nothing illegal, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover considered her a threat to the American state. Her telephone was tapped and her private life was closely observed. She knew about it and felt chased. In 1970, when she was seven months pregnant, FBI created a false story leaked to the media that the child she was carrying was not fathered by her second husband, French author Romain Gary, but by a member of the Black Panthers Party. The story was reported by gossip columnist Joyce Haber of the Los Angeles Times,and Newsweek magazine She gave birth to a girl on 23 August, but the infant died two days later.
In a press conference she presented the press with a picture of her fetus to demonstrate that the child did not have a father of African heritage. Seberg stated that the trauma of this event brought on premature labor and her child was stillborn. The child was named Nina Gary; the baby was actually fathered by Carlos Navarra. According to her husband, after the loss of their child she suffered from a deep depression and became suicidal. She also became dependent on alcohol and prescription drugs. She made several attempts to take her own life including throwing herself under a train on the Paris Métro.
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, whom she said had grievously abused her.
In August 1979, she was missing and found dead 11 days later in the back seat of her car, which was parked around the corner from her Paris apartment in the 16th arrondissement. 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 operated a car with that amount of alcohol in her body, and without the distance glasses she always maintained she absolutely needed for driving.[16] 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.
Jane Mallory Birkin : Jane Mallory Birkin OBE (born 14 December 1946) is an English-born French actress, singer and film director.
Birkin was born in London, England to David Birkin, a Royal Navy lieutenant-commander and World War II espionage hero, and Judy Campbell, an actress in Noel Coward musicals. Birkin's brother is the screenwriter/director Andrew Birkin. First cousin of her father was Freda Dudley Ward, a mistress of Edward VIII while he was Prince of Wales.
Career : Birkin emerged in the swinging '60s in London, starring as one of the models in the controversial 1966 film Blowup. In 1968, Birkin went to France to audition for the lead female role in Slogan. Though she did not speak French, she got the role. In "Slogan" she would play alongside Serge Gainsbourg, who became her collaborator. She sang the theme song for "Slogan" with Gainsbourg which became their first of many musical collaborations.
In 1969, she and Serge Gainsbourg released the song "Je t'aime... moi non plus" ("I love you... me neither"), written initially for Brigitte Bardot (the recording was released only in the seventies), by Gainsbourg and featuring both of them singing, which caused a scandal for its sexual explicitness. Arguably due in part to the publicity it got from being banned by radio stations in Italy, Spain, and the UK, it was a commercial success all over Europe. The song's fame is a result of its salacious lyrics (sung in French) against a background of female moaning and groaning, culminating in an orgasm at the song's conclusion. Birkin took a break from acting in 1971-72, but returned as Brigitte Bardot's lover in Don Juan (or if Don Juan were a woman) in 1973. In 1975, she appeared in Gainsbourg's first film, also entitled Je t'aime... moi non plus, which created a stir for frank examination of sexual ambiguity. For this performance she was nominated for a Best Actress César Award.
Birkin has starred in the Agatha Christie films Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun, and recorded several albums, including Baby Alone in Babylone, Amours des Feintes, Lolita Go Home and Rendez-vous. She has obtained in the category Female Artist of the year in France the Victoires de la Musique award in 1992.
She starred in two films by Jacques Doillon — as Anne in La fille prodigue (1981) and as Alma in La pirate (1984, nominated for a César Award). This work led to an invitation from Patrice Chéreau to star on stage in La Fausse suivante by Marivaux at Nanterre. After this, she also began to appear frequently on stage in plays and concerts (in France, Japan, the UK and then the US).
Personal Life : She was married from 1965 until 1968 to John Barry, an English composer who wrote the musical score to the James Bond movies. Their daughter, the photographer Kate Barry, was born in 1967.
She had a passionate and creative relationship with her mentor Serge Gainsbourg — they met on the set of Slogan and married in 1968. They separated in 1980. Their daughter is actress Charlotte Gainsbourg.
In 1982 she gave birth to her third daughter, Lou Doillon, from her relationship with the director Jacques Doillon.
One of the more ornate abandoned places in the world this railway station in Abkhazia is a stunning relic from the collapse of the Soviet empire. Soviet era train stations were often overdone marble monuments to the working man and this was no exception.
Abkhazian railways consist of a 185-kilometre (115 mi) main line along the Black Sea coast and a 36 km (22 mi) branch to Tkvarcheli. It connected Russia’s North Caucasus Railway with Georgian railways prior to 1992, however the connection with Georgia was severed as a result of the War in Abkhazia. The railway is administered by the state-run Abkhazskaya Zheleznaya Doroga company. At the beginning of 2008 there was one regular long-distance train Moscow-Sukhumi and occasional freight traffic. The railway system of Abkhazia was isolated in the 1990s due to the blockade imposed by Russia.
The Russian military relies on railroads to deploy heavy weapons and armor to the battlefield. The acute military, strategic and tactical importance of the railroad system in Russia explains the existence of special Railroad Troops whose task is to keep the tracks in order during and in preparation for war and to organize makeshift armor battlefield disembarkment points.
The railway was once a busy passenger route between Abkhazia and Russia and is testament to the former Soviet’s rich past. It now belongs to nature.
In July 2008 Russian troops repaired 54 km of Soviet-built tracks with 20 tunnels and bridges south of the Abkhaz capital Sukhumi to the coastal town of Ochamchire. The railroad was out of use since the early 1990s, a period which witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Georgia-Abkhaz war. At a colorful official ceremony in Dranda, south of Sukhumi, the commander of the Railroad Troops General Sergei Klimets told journalists that the railroad operation was “purely humanitarian” to help the people of Abkhazia.
At the height of the Russian Empire buildings were grandiose, colorful and inspiring but since the collapse of the USSR some lie abandoned, as with this railway station in Abkhazia, a former Russian territory.
In Short : This is an abandoned railway station in Abkhazia, former Russian territory. It stays untouched since the collapse of USSR - the railway connection of Abkhazia and Russia stopped and railway station left out of demand so nature could take over the left-overs of Soviet architecture. In my opinion it reminds somehow the Prince of Persia video game scenes or scenes from the movie of the abandoned civilization after some major disaster.
