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Edwige Feuillère (1907-1998)

Edwige Feuillère

Edwige Feuillère (1907-1998) was one of the most distinguished French stage and screen actresses of the 20th century with a career spanning over six decades. For generations of French film and theatre audiences Ms Feuillère was a beloved star thanks to her wide dramatic range, elegant dress sense, charming countenance and melodious speaking voice.

Born in Besançon in 1907, she studied acting at the conservatory of dramatic arts of Dijon. In 1930, she joined the Comédie Française. In 1935, Ms Feuillère rose to widespread fame when she starred in the historical drama Lucrèce Borgia directed by the legendary film director Abel Gance, best known for his epic Napoléon (1927). One scandalous scene in Lucrèce Borgia, showed the title character nude in profile. 

Édwige Feuillère appeared in films by the greatest directors of her day such as Marcel Tourneur’s Mam'zelle Bonaparte (1942) and Sans Ledemain (1940) and de Mayerling à Sarajevo (1940) both by Austrian émigré Max Ophuls.

On the stage, her greatest roles included the heroine in La Dame aux Camelias, the title character in La Folle de Chaillot and the femme fatale in Paul Claudel’s Partage de Midi. In 1943, Ms Feuillère created the role of Lia in Jean Girardeaux’s Sodome et Gomorrhe, the play ran for 215 performances. Her interpretation of Racine’s Phaedre was hailed as the gold standard for anyone following her in the classic role. 

She had a close friendship and working relationship with Jean Cocteau who wrote the play L’Aigle à Deux Têtes for her, a fictional romance loosely based on the myth of Empress Sissi. After a run of 200 performances, she reprised the role in the 1947 film adaptation opposite Jean Cocteau’s partner Jean Marais. In the 1950s, she starred in the film le Blé en Herbe (1954), based on Colette’s novel about a May-December relationship between a teenage boy and a middle-aged woman. 

Following a career lasting decades, Ms Feuillère’s last appearance was in a 1995 television film based on the Balzac novel La Duchesse de Langeais.