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WP's Homage to  Anny Duperey

Personal record: quick biography

Extensive data about Anny Duperey's career and biographical info with sufficient details and images as well are to be found - not astounding - in French. Thus especially Anny Duperey's unofficial fan site (anny-duperey.chez-alice.fr) presents a lot of info and numerous photos. There one will find up-to-date info, news and a forum, too. By all means really worth to visit.

Language barrier - you don't speak French? I'm facing the same problem - therefore here on the right the link to a summary of several French sources and further info in English. (Not to be forgotten here: Merci beaucoup, Laure, for your very kind support!)
To follow just a brief dossier.

Anny Duperey; photo circa 1974

Expressive statement of the French TV magazine Télé-7-Jours about the TV staging of the Giraudoux drama La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu (Engl.: The Trojan War will not take place or Tiger at the Gates), 1981:

The dramatic performances are magnificent at all: One couldn't have imagined a better one as Hèléne - downright the symbol of beauty - than Anny Duperey.

Even the US Playboy magazine has taken notice of her and has appointed her to be one of the »Sex Stars of 1977«. Probably because of Pardon mon Affaire, 1976 (the original of Woman in Red; César nomination).
And at least the French readers appreciate her so much as author that her books have got (partly award winning) best-sellers. Partly they are even available as translations and were published among others in English, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch and Chinese.

A filmography of the most beautiful actress especially well known in France and French speaking countries you will find for instance in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com), an English listing of her appearance in movies, on TV and on stage.
Often she plays in TV mini serials and also she has already repeatedly received the 7 d'Or TV award. In Canada she was elected as best actress of the year and she names many other awards her own. As proof of her talent may be considered that she conspicuously often plays double roles. Just even as mother and daughter.
DVDs, videos and books are available besides Amazon e.g. at Alapage and FNAC. And find some cinema posters or video covers at Moviecovers.com. Just search for duperey.

But in real she likes to be a stage actress. So several times she has been nominated for the Molière. In fact she comes from the theater academy and not from the model scene, although one doesn't really think so due to her appearance.

Nevertheless sympathically she has completely remained natural. Why - she already explained in 1977, when a smooth way to Hollywood was opened (Bobby Deerfield, 1977):
I shall not become a great star like my friend Al Pacino - but I really don't want this at all. To be a star changes the character - I could tell of some examples...

By the way - Anny Duperey is member of an artist family: Her great-uncle was the impressionist Claude Monet, her father, Lucien Legras, a famous photographer.

Autograph card photo

Honi soit qui mal y pense

(Engl.: A villain is who thinks evil of it; inscription on the English Order of the Garter)

Exactly, I carefully prepared myself to get in contact (about the year 15 A.D. ;-) and I struggled through to write to her agency: Both signatures displayed in the flag above are from the autograph card and the reply she signed and sent.
And the high-speed thinker I am has realized only after all these years that she looks, at least sometimes, somehow dreamy even close up to melancholy and almost I should have addressed her to this case...

Farou (Jean Rochefort) to Fanny (Anny Duperey) in La Seconde: You are looking so pretty but so blue. Are you blue then?

But then I have happened to stumble over her autobiography - my worst foreboding I should have wanted to clear in a maybe optional conversation very carefully (of course, preferably I should have seen them scattered!) unfortunately have been confirmed.
But, however, I wasn't really through with the complete matter yet... Or to say it like Thomas Wolfe in Dark in the Forest, strange as Time:

[...] a woman so beautiful that the remembrance of her should haunt the memory of the one who saw her for ever [...].

A short reading rehearsal

Extract out of the German pocket book edition of her extraordinary remarkable and famous autobiography Le voile noir (Seuil, 1992; Engl.: The Black Veil). It is her attempt to overcome the heavy blow determining her entire life: At eight she lost her parents in an - well, let's say - accident. They suffocated in the bathroom. And Anny happened to find them.

German editions; photo circa 1988

It is none of the usual star autobiographies. One is not told which in-drinks together with which in-people in which in-bars were en vogue e.g. in the late summer of 1973. It is very private, frank, even close up to a sober clear off. Without self-adulation, without lachrymose attitude, but sometimes almost without mercy for herself - and the reader. Nevertheless, there is enough room for pointed thoughts. Not for nothing the book was for weeks at the top of the French best-sellers.

[Preface] There is no sorrow time does not relieve.
This wisdom is by an unknown, very likely deceased author.
It's a pity, because I should like to ask him: »And HOW LONG does the time take for it?«

At present I have a cat that is allowed to sit down in the middle of the table and to put its nose into my children's plates without causing me to react in the least. I know this maybe surprising. The explanation, however, is just very simple: For many years I have shared my bed and my plate with cats without any negative effects.
[...] I inherit my need for physical nearness towards those animals I like from her [the grandmother]. And my opinion that animals have an equal right to take part in the family life probably derives from her, too.

They were twenty years old. They worked in the same photo store. They liked each other. And my father had asked his pretty colleague to pose for nude photos in order to do some illumination studies yet...
I don't know which artistic result these nightly sessions had, anyhow they had another very obvious result: me.

End of Le voile noir or its continuation, so she calls it, is Les chats de hasard (Seuil, 1999; Engl.: Cats of Destiny). Even if it is hard to imagine: An even more personal book of a cat loving woman not only for other cat lovers. Therefore for weeks on top of the French best-sellers, too. The following lines are a close extract of the original text.

Anny Duperey (often used photo)

People who love cats avoid relations of force. To give commands is reluctant to them. They dream of a calm and soft world where all would live together in harmony. They would like to be what they are without anybody reproaching them for it.

People who love cats are skilful to flee conflicts and can defend themselves very poorly when being attacked. They prefer to be silent, even risking to be regarded as coward. They tend to retire into their selves, to a certain absorption. [...] They are not afraid of the silence. [...]

People who love cats adore the cats' independence, because that guarantees their own freedom. They don't stand restrictions neither for themselves nor for others. They have this pride that those who love them should choose them each day without restrictions and could go anytime completely without any closed doors, leashes, negotiations. [...]

People who love cats sometimes excessively trust in intuition. The instinct wins against the reflection [...] And even if they are carried away to a commitment by their conviction, a part of themselves will always remain to be on themselves guard, ready to retire in their private territory of ideals. Like their companions they always vary between the pact with the society and the free life in their imagination.

People who love cats are often sensitive to cold. They have a great need to be comforted. For all reasons. They pretend to be adult and secretly keep a desire for never get grown-up. Jealously they preserve their childhood, where they find their secret hideaway, behind their half-closed eyelids, a cat on their knees.

»What are you thinking of?«
»Of nothing...«
»You don't say anything. Are you blue?«
»Oh no!«
»Tired?«
»No, I'm just dreaming.«
[...]
I love cats.

Anny Duperey
French actress

Exactly what I say all the time, too: Not the cat is humanized, but the human being is cat-ized.

So I ran to the pharmacist, who always discreetly suppresses a laugh attack when I rush into his shop, because after I had already bought baby antibiotics for my cat once, and another time mother milk replacement for a squirrel, now it concerns baby pap for a bird - »Neutral or with the taste of vanilla?« he asked mischievously.

Anny Duperey in: Les chats de hasard.

All for nothing but the cat (Animal Farm):

Farm

Photos and screenshots

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