Marie-France Pisier
Marie-France Pisier was a French actress, screenwriter, and director. She appeared in numerous films of the French New Wave, and twice earned the national César Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Early life
Pisier was born on 10 May 1944 in Dalat, where her father was serving as a colonial official in French Indochina. Her younger brother, Gilles Pisier, is a mathematician and a member of the French Academy of Sciences. Her sister, political scientist Evelyn, was the first wife of Bernard Kouchner, a French politician and the co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières. The family moved to Paris when Marie-France was 12 years old.Career
Five years later, Pisier made her screen acting debut for director François Truffaut in his 1962 film Antoine and Colette. She had a brief, but incendiary, romance with the older, married Truffaut. Despite its end, she later appeared in Truffaut's Stolen Kisses and Love on the Run, the fifth and final film in Truffaut's series about the character Antoine Doinel. Pisier was credited as a co-writer of the screenplay. In a review in The New York Times, film critic Vincent Canby praised her "ravishing performance".Pisier later collaborated on the screenplay to Jacques Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating ; she also played a significant supporting role in the film. Later in the same year, she had a role in Luis Buñuel's Phantom of Liberty.
Pisier gained widespread public recognition in 1975 when she appeared in Jean-Charles Tacchella's popular comedy Cousin Cousine. Her role as the volatile Karine earned her a César Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her subsequent feature films included three with director André Téchiné: French Provincial ; The Bronte Sisters, in which she portrayed Charlotte; and Barocco, for which she won a second César for her performance alongside Isabelle Adjani and Gérard Depardieu.
Pisier attempted to crack the American film industry with The Other Side of Midnight, adapted from a Sidney Sheldon novel. She appeared on American television in the miniseries The French Atlantic Affair, and Scruples the next year. She made two more Hollywood films, French Postcards with Debra Winger and Chanel Solitaire with Timothy Dalton.
Returning to France, Pisier made her directorial debut with The Governor's Party, which she adapted from her own novel. She also played Madame Verdurin in Raúl Ruiz's adaptation of Marcel Proust, Time Regained. Her final film as director was with Bérénice Bejo in Like An Airplane.
Personal life
Pisier's first marriage to Georges Kiejman ended in divorce. She resided in Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer, Var, and was married to Thierry Funck-Brentano. The couple had a son, Mathieu, and a daughter, Iris.In 1971, Pisier signed the Manifesto of the 343, publicly declaring she had an illegal abortion.