Lise Bourdin, one of France’s most recognizable fashion models of the 1940s and 50s who later transitioned to film, has died at the age of 99.
Her family told AFP that she died on Friday at her home in Labastide-d’Armagnac, just two days before her birthday.
With her brown hair and striking blue eyes, Bourdin became a favorite among major European magazines before she moved into the cinema.
She shared the screen with stars including Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier in Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon (1957), playing one of the many women attracted to Cooper’s American playboy.
Bourdin also appeared opposite Sophia Loren in The River Girl (1954), Linda Darnell and Vittorio De Sica in It Happens in Roma (1955), and Eddie Constantine in Dishonorable Discharge (1957), portray a fashion editor under extreme pressure.
Born on November 30, 1925 in Néris-les-Bains, she got into modeling by accident. A man who saw her at a train station introduced her to a photographer.
“I made an agreement with [a photographer] and the cover was published immediately,” she said in a 2017 interview. She soon graced the covers of Marie-Claire, Noir et Blanc and Harper’s Bazaar.
Life magazine introduced her in 1946 as a “youngster with a fresh country look,” and called her a “Paris sensation.” Reflecting on it years later, she remarked: “Few French women have had two sides in life. There were [Brigitte] Bardot, [Jeanne] Moreau and me.”
Her film career began with Les Enfants de l’amour (1953) and in Cannes 1954 she made headlines, even seen around town with Robert Mitchum.
After two final releases in 1959, she retired from acting. “The press didn’t like me… I told myself I’d never get the career I deserved, so I quit.”
Bourdin married once, briefly, and later spent 30 years with Raymond Marcellin, France’s former interior minister, until his death in 2004.
