Paris (AFP)

A familiar figure on screens in the 60s and 70s, Marie-José Nat, who died in Paris on Thursday, has had a career in film as well as television, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, Gérard Oury and Claude Autant- Lara.

This delicate beauty, with eyes as black as her hair, had received in 1974 the prize of female interpretation in Cannes for "Les Violons du Bal" by Michel Drach, autobiographical story of the director with whom she lived for more than a decade.

Marie-José Benhalassa was born in Bonifacio on April 22, 1940. She will remain all her life attached to the Island of Beauty. His father is a Kabyle soldier and his mother is a Corsican shepherdess. The family of five lives poorly.

Very young, she went to Paris to attend a Simon course, soon followed to the capital by all her family. "I wanted to be an actress at all costs, even if my father did not really believe in it." He said to me: "It does not matter if you lose, we will have made a nice trip from Corsica +," he said. it's much later.

Model at the beginning, Marie-José, who chose a pseudonym because of the mats she wears then, will be called, especially on the posters of his films, Marie-Jose or Marie-Josée.

It is quickly spotted by the director Georges Lampin who directs it in "Crime and Punishment" (1956) with Bernard Blier, his first film. But her first major role will be in 1959 in "Rue des Prairies" Denys de la Patelliere, where she plays the role of the daughter of the character played by Jean Gabin.

The following year, Marie-José Nat runs with Henri-Georges Clouzot in "The Truth", where she plays the sister and rival of Brigitte Bardot.

- "A fierce desire to succeed" -

In the 1960s, she married director Michel Drach. They will work together on five films and have three sons before separating in 1981.

In 1967, he presented him with one of his most beautiful roles in "Élise ou la vie vie", the story of a young girl who is in love with an Algerian militant of the FLN (National Liberation Front, fighting for independence of Algeria). The film is controversial, the Algerian war is still taboo in French society.

Marie-José Nat also worked a lot for television, as in the hit series "The People of Mogador", saga in 13 episodes, aired from 1972. She embodies, in 1850, Julia Angellier, a daughter of monarchist who marries an officer of the imperial army.

She has also played in quality TV films by Claude Barma, Marcel Bluwal and Nadine Trintignant.

On stage, she stands out in "Désiré" (by Sacha Guitry), staged and performed in 1984 by Jean-Claude Brialy and, in 1985, in "Voisin, voisine", staged by Pierre Mondy, alongside Victor Lanoux. She shares her life with him for several years.

Marie-José Nat remarried in 2005 with the writer and painter Serge Rezvani, known to the public for texts of famous songs for Jeanne Moreau ("The whirlwind of life" or "I have memory that flanks" ).

The couple lived in a beautiful house in Bonifacio. "In the hollow of me, she assured, there is always anguish, but also a fierce determination to succeed: I am a Corsican goat!"

She died Thursday in Paris at the age of 79 following a long illness, said his agent to AFP.

© 2019 AFP