Arnoul, Françoise

(1931- )

   Actress. Françoise Arnoul was born Françoise Gautsch in Algeria (at that time a French colony). Her father was an officer in the French army and her mother was an actress. In 1945, she went to Paris to study theater and dance, and she made her film debut in 1949 in l'Epave. The same year she also appeared in Charles Boyer's comic film Nous irons à Paris. In 1951, Arnoul got her first starring role in La Plus belle fille du monde, in which she played a beauty pageant contestant willing to do anything to win. This role led to several others in which she played ruthless or unscrupulous women or temptresses of various kinds. Films that cast Arnoul in this type of role include Le Fruit défendu (1952), in which she starred opposite Fernandel, Dortoir des grandes (1953), in which she starred with Jean Marais, La Rage au corps (1953), Les Amants du tage (1955), and La Chatte (1958).

   Arnoul's first great role came in 1955 in Jean Renoir's French Cancan, in which she played opposite Jean Gabin as an ordinary girl transformed into a cancan dancer. She would star opposite Gabin again the following year in Henri Verneuil's Des Gens sans importance. In 1956, Arnoul had a starring role in a film directed by another icon of French cinema, Marcel Carné's Le Pays d'où je viens. 1962 would see her directed by two other greats, Marc Allégret in Les Parisiennes and Julien Duvivier in Le Diable et les dix commandements, in which she starred opposite Charles Aznavour.

   In 1963, Arnoul starred in Pierre Kast's Vacances portugaises, and then left acting to work for the actors union. She has since made only a handful of films: Jacques Rouffio's Violette & François (1977), Jean-Claude Missiaen's Ronde de nuit (1984), Jean Marboeuf's Voir l'éléphant (1990) and Temps de chien (1996), Philippe Leriche's Les Années campagne (1992), Brigitte Rouan's Post coitum (1997), and Claude Faraldo's Merci pour le geste (2000).