Lise Bourdin, one of the most recognized French models of the 1940s and 1950s, who later transitioned to film, has died at the age of 99.
His family told AFP that he died on Friday at his home in Labastide-d’Armagnac, two days before his birthday.
With her brown hair and striking blue eyes, Bourdin became a favorite of major European magazines before turning to film.
She shared the screen with stars such as Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier in Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon (1957), where she played one of the many women attracted to Cooper’s American playboy.
Bourdin also appeared alongside Sophia Loren in The Girl in the River (1954), Linda Darnell and Vittorio De Sica in It happens in Rome (1955), and Eddie Constantine in Dishonorable Discharge (1957), portraying a fashion editor under extreme pressure.
Born on November 30, 1925 in Néris-les-Bains, she entered modeling by chance. A man who saw her at a train station introduced her to a photographer.
“I made an appointment with [a photographer] and the cover was published immediately,” she said in a 2017 interview. She soon appeared on the covers of Marie-Claire, Noir et Blanc and Harper’s Bazaar.
life magazine He presented her in 1946 as a “young woman with a fresh country air” and called her a “Paris sensation.” Years later, reflecting on it, she noted: “Few French women have written two pages in Life. [Brigitte] bardot, [Jeanne] Moreau and me.
Her film career began with Les Enfants de l’amour (1953), and by Cannes in 1954 she was already making headlines; she was even seen around town with Robert Mitchum.
After two final releases in 1959, he left acting. “The press didn’t like me… I told myself I would never have the career I deserved, so I quit.”
Bourdin was married once, briefly, and then spent 30 years with Raymond Marcellin, former French Interior Minister, until his death in 2004.
