Nicole Stephane

Nicole Stéphane was a French actress, producer and director who was born into the wealthy Rothschild banking family of France. She joined the army during the Second World War and was briefly imprisoned in Spain while trying to join the Free French. She later became a liaison agent in Germany. She started her acting career after the war and was discovered by Jean-Pierre Melville, who cast her in his first film, Le Silence de la mer (1949). She gained fame for her role as Elisabeth, the semi-incestuous sister, in Melville's adaptation of Jean Cocteau's novel Les Enfants terribles (1950). She also appeared in several other films, such as Born of Unknown Father (1950), The Unfrocked One (1954), Monsieur et Madame Curie (1956) and Carve Her Name with Pride (1958). Her acting career was cut short by a car accident, after which she turned to film production. She helped produce films by Georges Franju, Jean-Pierre Melville, Frédéric Rossif, Marguerite Duras and Susan Sontag. She also directed two documentaries on Israel and one on Sarajevo. She was involved in a long-term project to adapt Marcel Proust's novel À la recherche du temps perdu to the screen, but it was never completed. She was also honoured as a member of Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France. She had romantic relationships with Susan Sontag, Colette de Jouvenel and Francine Weisweiller. She died in 2007 at the age of 83 from natural causes.