Danielle Darrieux, the French actress whose career on screen and stage spanned eight decades, has died at the age of 100, the Associated Press reported.
A favorite of French directors such as Claude Chabrol, Jacques Demy and Andre Techine, she won an honorary Cesar Award in 1985.
She made her first appearance on film at age 14 in the 1931 musical “Le Bal,” and continued to work well into her 90s. She won wide acclaim for her role as the matriarch in Francois Ozon’s 2002 film “8 Women.”
Austrian-born Billy Wilder cast her in his 1934 directorial debut, a French-language gangster movie called “Mauvaise graine.”
Other notable projects included Max Ophuls’ 1953 drama “The Earrings of Madame de…,” Jacques Demy’s beloved 1967 musical “The Young Girls of Rochefort” and the 2007 Oscar-nominated animated film “Persepolis.”
She also made a brief foray into Hollywood, appearing in such films as 1938’s “The Rage of Paris” opposite Douglas Fairbanks Jr., the 1951 MGM musical “Rich, Young and Pretty,” 1952’s “5 Fingers” opposite James Mason and the 1956 epic “Alexander the Great” opposite Richard Burton.
In 1971, Darrieux made her Broadway debut replacing Katharine Hepburn in “Coco,” a musical about the fashion legend Coco Chanel.