Jean Seberg
About
Biography
Filmography
Family & Companions
Notes
"Seberg's appeal lay not in her acting ability (or lack thereof) but in her peculiarly blank beauty, onto which her directors and audiences projected whatever emotion they wished...Seberg broke the unwritten rule of screen acting: never look the camera, and the audience, in the eye. She did, expressionless, and allowed us to see whatever we wanted".--Maureen Callahan, quoted in NEW YORK MAGAZINE, 3/18/96
Biography
Jean Seberg was a gamine, blonde actress who landed the title role in Otto Preminger's "Saint Joan" (1957) after a much-publicized contest involving some 18,000 hopefuls. She was best-known, however, for her contribution to New Wave cinema. The fresh-faced Iowan started acting in high school, but was a completely unknown 17-year-old when Preminger whisked her off to England. "Saint Joan" and its star were critically slammed, but Preminger went on to star her again in the soap opera "Bonjour Tristesse" (1958), which was scandalous and "modern" enough to buoy Seberg's career. After the silly but popular British comedy "The Mouse That Roared" (1959), Seberg was cast in Jean-Luc Godard's landmark New Wave feature "A Bout de souffle/Breathless" (1959), which brought her renewed international attention. As an American in Paris, selling papers on the streets and romancing wanted criminal Jean-Paul Belmondo, she gave a careless, modern and very hip performance. Seberg hopped back and forth from America to Europe, making a total of 30 films. In Mervyn LeRoy's "Moment to Moment" (1966), she was a professor's bored wife who drifts into an affair with murderous results. Seberg was another cheating wife in Irvin Kershner's "A Fine Madness" (also 1966) and played a woman sold to a hard-drinking prospector (Lee Marvin) in Joshua Logan's musical "Paint Your Wagon" (1969). Seberg was the passenger relations expert in the all-star blockbuster "Airport" (1970) and a woman going mad in Northern Africa in "Ondata di Calore/Dead of Summer" (1970). Her last feature was "Die Wildente/The Wild Duck" (1976), a German-language version of the Henrik Ibsen play. Seberg made her only US TV appearance in the ABC movie "Mousey" (1974), which co-starred Kirk Douglas and silent film veteran Bessie Love.
Filmography
Cast (Feature Film)
Life Events
1957
Film debut in "Saint Joan"
1959
Won international acclaim for role in New Wave classic, "Breathless"
1970
Final US feature, "Macho Callahan"
1974
TV-movie debut, "Mousey" (ABC)
1974
Directed short film "Ballad of the Kid"
1976
Final film, "Die Wildente"
1996
Was subject of fictional documentary "From the Journals of Jean Seberg"
Photo Collections
Videos
Movie Clip
Trailer
Companions
Bibliography
Notes
"Seberg's appeal lay not in her acting ability (or lack thereof) but in her peculiarly blank beauty, onto which her directors and audiences projected whatever emotion they wished...Seberg broke the unwritten rule of screen acting: never look the camera, and the audience, in the eye. She did, expressionless, and allowed us to see whatever we wanted".--Maureen Callahan, quoted in NEW YORK MAGAZINE, 3/18/96
