Anna Karina, star of Bande à Part and Pierrot le Fou and long-time collaborator with New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard, has died of cancer at the age of 79, her agent said.
The actor starred in seven films made by her ex-husband Godard, including Alphaville.
“Anna died yesterday in a Paris hospital of the effects of cancer,” her agent Laurent Balandras told AFP, adding that she passed away with her fourth husband, American director Dennis Berry, at her side.
“Today, French cinema has been orphaned. It has lost one of its legends,” culture minister Franck Riester tweeted.
Karina developed a successful modelling career before being spotted by Godard while walking along the Champs-Élysées in Paris.
At the age of 21, she won best actress at the Berlin film festival for Godard's 1961 film A Woman is a Woman. They divorced in 1965, after which she made films with Jacques Rivette, Luchino Visconti and Tony Richardson.
“We loved each other a lot,” Karina told AFP in an interview in Paris in March 2018. “But it was complicated to live with him,” she added. “He was someone who could say to you, ‘I am going to get some cigarettes’ and come back three weeks later.”
Karina also had a career as a director, having made Vivre Ensemble, a romance between a teacher and a young woman plagued by drugs and domestic violence.
She had some success as a singer, too, recording "Sous Le Soleil Exactement" with Serge Gainsbourg.
