French star Anouk Aimée, who died on Tuesday, June 18, aged 92, cast a spell over a generation of film-goers with her doomed romance in Claude Lelouch's box-office smash A Man and A Woman. Her role as a lovelorn widow in the 1966 film famous for its "chabadabada, chabadabada" theme tune won her an Oscar nomination, a Golden Globe for best actress and her entry into Hollywood.
Aimée's elegant sophistication had already made her a star of such European masterpieces as Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 1/2 (1963), and she was unforgettable as the ageing aging ageing showgirl in Jacques Demy's heartbreaking musical Lola (1961). Fellini in particular revered her, saying her "face has the same intriguing sensuality as that of (Greta) Garbo, (Marlene) Dietrich or (Cindy) Crawford, these great mysterious queens, these priestesses of femininity." "Anouk Aimée represents the kind of woman who worries you to death," he said.
That combination of "melancholy and passion" marked much of her remarkable career, with the American director Robert Altman bringing her out of retirement to rekindle her old spark with Marcello Mastroianni in the acclaimed Prêt a Porter in 1994.