21 Facts About Simone Signoret

Simone Signoret received various accolades, including an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, a Cesar Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, in addition to nominations for two Golden Globe Awards.

Simone Signoret was the eldest of three children, with two younger brothers.

Simone Signoret's father, a pioneering interpreter who worked in the League of Nations, was a French-born army officer from an assimilated and middle-class Polish-Jewish and Hungarian-Jewish family, who brought the family to Neuilly-sur-Seine on the outskirts of Paris.

Simone Signoret's mother, Georgette, from whom she acquired her stage name, was a French Catholic.

Simone Signoret grew up in Paris in an intellectual atmosphere and studied English, German and Latin.

Simone Signoret took her mother's maiden name for the screen to help hide her Jewish roots.

Simone Signoret won considerable attention in La Ronde, a film which was banned briefly in New York City as immoral.

Simone Signoret won further acclaim, including an acting award from the British Film Academy, for her portrayal of another prostitute, Amelie Elie, in Jacques Becker's Casque d'or.

Simone Signoret appeared in many French films during the 1950s, including Therese Raquin, directed by Marcel Carne, Les Diaboliques, and The Crucible, based on Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

In 1958, Simone Signoret acted in the English independent film Room at the Top, and her performance won numerous awards, including the Best Female Performance Prize at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Simone Signoret earned another Oscar nomination for her work on Ship of Fools, appeared in a few other Hollywood films, and returned to France in 1969.

In 1962, Simone Signoret translated Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes into French for a production in Paris that ran for six months at the Theatre Sarah-Bernhardt.

Simone Signoret won acclaim for her portrayal of a weary madam in Madame Rosa and as an unmarried sister who unknowingly falls in love with her paralyzed brother via anonymous correspondence in I Sent a Letter to my Love.

Simone Signoret has appeared in many movies before her death in 1985.

Simone Signoret wrote the novel Adieu Volodya, published in 1985, the year of her death.

Simone Signoret first married filmmaker Yves Allegret, with whom she had a daughter Catherine Allegret.

Simone Signoret's second marriage was to the Italian-born French actor Yves Montand in 1951, a union which lasted until her death; the couple had no children.

Simone Signoret died of pancreatic cancer in Autheuil-Authouillet, France, aged 64.

Simone Signoret was buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, and Yves Montand later was buried next to her.

Simone Signoret was a supporter of a variety of Jewish causes, including the Zionist movement and the Soviet Jewry movement.

Simone Signoret maintained relationships with many Israeli leaders and was critical of antisemitism in the French Communist Party.