Mara Casares

Vocation

Spanish-French actress and one of the most distinguished stars of the French stage. She was usually credited in France as Maria Casarès. Her first film role was in Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du paradis (1945), one of the great classics of French cinema. She also made Les dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945) for Robert Bresson, La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1948) for Christian-Jaque, co-starring Gérard Philipe. For Cocteau, she played Death in his Orphée (1950) with Jean Marais and François Périer and in his Testament d'Orphée (Testament of Orpheus) (1959). In 1989, she was nominated for the César Award for Best Supporting Actress in La Lectrice. Casares took up French nationality in 1975 and three years later married André Schlesser, an actor known professionally as 'Dade, who had been her longtime companion and theatrical co-star. She published her autobiography, Résidente privilégiée (Privileged Resident) in 1980, in which she discusses her 16-year affair with Albert Camus. The actress died at her country house, Château de La Vergne, in the village of Alloue in Poitou-Charentes, on 22 November 1996 aged 74. Link to Wikipedia biography