Biographies: Francoise Rosay - Actor

Biographies

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A French actress born in Paris as Françoise Bandy de Nalèche. Rosay married director, writer, and actor Jacques Feyder (1917-1948), and they had three children. Among Françoise's most important works are Johnny Frenchman (1945), Carnival in Flanders (1935), Back Streets of Paris (1946), and Le Petit Cafe (1931). Françoise Rosay was an opera singer, actress, and writer. She enjoyed a cinematic career spanning more than 60 years and became a legendary figure in French cinema, making 114 films in cinema and 8 television works. She always played the role of a cruel and strict authoritarian mother. Françoise Rosay was born the illegitimate daughter of the actress Sylvia. She made her first silent short film, Falstaff (1911), and planned to become an opera singer. She studied acting and singing at the Paris Conservatoire in 1913. She sang soprano at the Paris National Opera. She was proficient in playing the piano and made her first feature film, Les Vampires (1915). In 1917, she won an award at the Paris Conservatoire and made several French silent films. Her first appearance in Hollywood was in the film The One Woman Idea (1929). She also appeared in several films directed by her husband, such as Pension Mimosas (1935). When the Nazis occupied Paris, she lived with her husband in Britain and Switzerland and studied acting at the Geneva Conservatory, then headed to Algeria, where she worked on its radio and broadcast propaganda messages on behalf of the Free French government in exile. For a brief period in the early fifties, she stood on the stage of the Winter Garden Theater in London. Her last appearance was in the Swiss-German film Der FuBganger (1973). She died in Montgeron, Essonne, France, on March 28, 1974.

• 9 January 2024
• Toqa Hesham