Claude Jade

Claude Marcelle Jorré, better known as Claude Jade (; 8 October 1948 – 1 December 2006) , was a French actress. She starred as Christine in François Truffaut's three films Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board (1970) and Love on the Run (1979). Jade acted in theatre, film and television. Her film work outside France, where she displays her talent in works such as My Uncle Benjamin (1969), The Boat on the Grass (1971) or The Pawn (1978), has Claude Jade included the Soviet Union, the United States (Alfred Hitchcock's Topaz), Italy, Belgium, Germany and Japan. She was most famous on television as the heroine of the mysterious adventure series The Island of Thirty Coffins (1979). She was also the leading actress in the first French daily soap opera, Cap des Pins (1998–2000). Her last role was playing Célimène in the 2006 theatre play and film Célimène et le cardinal.

Early life The daughter of university professors, Jade spent three years at Dijon's Conservatory of Dramatic Art. She moved to Paris and became a student of Jean-Laurent Cochet at the Edouard VII theater, and began acting in television productions, including a leading role in TV series Les oiseaux rares.

Career Early work and films with François Truffaut (1960s) While at Dijon's Conservatory of Dramatic Art, in 1964 she played on stage 40 times the part of Agnès in Molière's L'école des femmes. In 1966 she won the Prix de Comédie for Jean Giraudoux's stage play Ondine, performed at the Comédie Boulogne.

While performing as Frida in Pirandello's Henri IV, in a production by Sacha Pitoëff at the Théâtre Moderne, Jade was discovered by New Wave film director François Truffaut. He was "completely taken by her beauty, her manners, her kindness, and her joie de vivre",

American critic Pauline Kael wrote that Jade "seems a less ethereal, more practical Catherine Deneuve".

Playing the same character at different stages of her life, Jade appeared in three Truffaut films: loved from a distance in Stolen Kisses; married and misled in Bed and Board (Domicile Conjugal, 1970); and divorced but still on good terms in Love on the Run (1979).

Hitchcock said she resembled his former star Grace Kelly, and in France she was a younger Danielle Darrieux. Some of her scenes were deleted and restored for the director's cut of Topaz in 1999. Topaz was Jade's only Hollywood film. Universal Pictures offered her a seven-year contract, which she turned down reportedly because she preferred to work in French.

She had a leading role as Linda in Sous le signe de Monte-Cristo (Under the Sign of Monte Cristo) by André Hunebelle, a modern version of Alexandre Dumas' novel. Here, the 19-year-old actress starred alongside French cinema veterans like Pierre Brasseur and Michel Auclair.

Jade starred in Édouard Molinaro's My Uncle Benjamin (Mon oncle Benjamin, 1969) alongside Jacques Brel. As Manette she refuses Brel's advances until he produces a marriage contract. At the End Manette realizes she prefers happiness to a marriage contract after all. It was to have starred Jade as Vaslav Nijinsky's wife, with Rudolf Nureyev as Nijinsky and Paul Scofield as his lover Sergei Diaghilev.

In 1970 she reprised her part as Christine from Stolen Kisses in Truffaut's Bed and Board as a married woman. The Truffaut films influenced her type as lovingly gentle modern young woman in contemporary cinema, which she contrasted in ambivalent figures: Critic Vincent Canby praised her work in Gérard Brach's The Boat on the Grass (Le bateau sur l'herbe, 1971), in which she starred as Eleonore, a young girl who comes between two friends (Jean-Pierre Cassel, John McEnery). She starred in Hearth Fires (Les feux de la chandeleur, 1972) as Laura, a daughter who wants to reconcile her parents (Annie Girardot, Jean Rochefort) and who falls in love with her mother's best friend (Bernard Fresson). Alongside Robert Hossein she played the priest's love, Françoise, in Forbidden Priests (Prêtres interdits, 1973). In Home Sweet Home (1973), she played a hardened nurse who is changed by a love affair with a social worker (Jacques Perrin).

2000s In her last decade, Jade's work included the TV movie Sans famille (2000); the series La Crim (episode "Le secret" in 2004), and Groupe Flag (episode "Vrai ou faux" in 2005). She also appeared in an episode of the short film series Drug Scenes (Scénarios sur la drogue, episode "La rampe", 2000); and in the short À San Remo (2004).

On 1 December 2006, Jade died of uveal melanoma, which had metastasised to metastatic liver disease. She wore a prosthetic eye in Celimene and the Cardinal, her last stage performance, in August 2006.

Awards Jade won an award in 1970 for "Révelation de la Nuit du cinéma",

Selected filmography Armande de Montcourtet Dominique Guillo 2005 Groupe Flag: Vrai ou faux Emma Nazarov Éteinne Dhaene 2006 Célimène et le cardinal''CélimèneJacques Rampalfilmed play