French postcard by Editions Cahiers du Cinéma, Paris, 1997. Photo: Traverso. Caption: Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard, Festival de Cannes 1963.

French, but Danish-born film actress, singer, and director Anna Karina (1940-2019) was the queen of the Nouvelle Vague. Karina was the muse of director Jean-Luc Godard and starred in eight of his films.

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) is a French film director and screenwriter. He is one of the most important members of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave). Godard first received global acclaim for his feature À bout de souffle/Breathless (1959), helping to establish the New Wave movement. Godard's films have inspired many directors including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Altman, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Wong Kar-wai. He has been married twice, to actresses Anna Karina and Anne Wiazemsky, both of whom starred in several of his films.

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French postcard by Editions Cahiers du Cinéma, Paris, 1997. Photo: Traverso. Quentin Tarantino, Festival de Cannes 1994.

American director/screenwriter/actor/producer Quentin Tarantino (1963) was the most distinctive and volatile talent to emerge in American film in the 1990s. Tarantino learned his craft from his days as a video clerk at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, CA. He developed a fusion of pop culture and independent arthouse cinema. With Pulp Fiction (1994) he won the Palme d'Or for best film at the Cannes Film Festival. He also won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, in addition to nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. Inglourious Basterds (2009) also received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. He won his second Oscar for the screenplay of Django Unchained (2012).

Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennesse, in 1963. He was the only child of Connie McHugh and aspiring actor Tony Tarantino, who left the family before his son's birth. Quentin grew up in Los Angeles, and his stepfather Curtis Zastoupil encouraged Tarantino's love of cinema. The summer after his 15th birthday, Tarantino was grounded by his mother for shoplifting Elmore Leonard's novel 'The Switch' from Kmart. He was allowed to leave only to attend the Torrance Community Theater, where he participated in such plays as 'Two Plus Two Makes Sex' and 'Romeo and Juliet'. Later, Tarantino attended acting classes at the James Best Theatre Company, where he met several of his eventual collaborators. During his five years at Video Archives, he began writing screenplays. In 1987, he completed his first, True Romance, with his co-worker, Roger Avary who would later also become a director. Tarantino tried to get financial backing to film the script. After years of negotiations, he decided to sell the script, which wound up in the hands of director Tony Scott. During this time, Tarantino wrote the screenplay for Natural Born Killers. Again, he was unable to come up with enough investors to make a film and gave the script to his partner, Rand Vossler. Tarantino then used the money he made from True Romance to begin pre-production on Reservoir Dogs, a Neo-Noir about a failed heist. Reservoir Dogs received financial backing from LIVE Entertainment (now Lionsgate) after Harvey Keitel agreed to star in the film. Word-of-mouth on Reservoir Dogs began to build at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival, which led to scores of glowing reviews, making the film a cult hit. While many critics and fans were praising Tarantino, he developed a sizable number of detractors. Claiming he ripped off the obscure Hong Kong thriller City on Fire, the critics only added to the director/writer's already considerable buzz. In 1993, Tarantino wrote and directed his next feature, Pulp Fiction, which featured three interweaving crime storylines; Tony Scott's big-budget production of True Romance was also released that year.

In 1994, Quentin Tarantino was elevated from a cult figure to a major celebrity. Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, beginning the flood of good reviews. Before Pulp Fiction was released, Oliver Stone's bombastic version of Natural Born Killers hit the theatres. Tarantino distanced himself from the film and was only credited for writing the basic story. Pulp Fiction soon eclipsed Natural Born Killers in both acclaim and popularity. Made for eight million dollars, the film eventually grossed over 100 million dollars and topped many critics' top ten lists. Pulp Fiction earned seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay (Tarantino and Avary), Best Actor (John Travolta), Best Supporting Actor (Samuel L. Jackson), and Best Supporting Actress (Uma Thurman). It won one, for Tarantino and Avery's writing. After the film's success, Tarantino was everywhere, from talk shows to a cameo in the low-budget Sleep With Me. He directed a segment of the anthology film Four Rooms (1995) and acted in Robert Rodriguez's sequel to El Mariachi, Desperado, and the comedy Destiny Turns on the Radio, in which he had a starring role. Tarantino also kept busy with television, directing an episode of the NBC TV hit ER and appearing in Margaret Cho's sitcom All-American Girl. The latter half of the 1990s saw Tarantino continue his multifaceted role as an actor, director, screenwriter, and producer. In 1996, he served as the screenwriter and executive producer for the George Clooney schlock-fest From Dusk Till Dawn, and the following year renewed some of his earlier acclaim as the director and screenwriter of Jackie Brown (1997), an homage to the blaxploitation films of the 1970s. The film was an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel 'Rum Punch'. It won him the raves that had been missing for much of his post-Fiction career. In 1999, he was back behind the camera as the producer for From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money.

Quentin Tarantino laid relatively low in the early years of the new millennium. In late 2002, the hype started to build around his fourth feature, Kill Bill (2003). Though originally envisioned to be a single release, Kill Bill was eventually separated into two films entitled Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2 when it became obvious that the story was simply too far-reaching to be contained in a single film. A kinetic homage to revenge movies of the 1970s, Kill Bill Vol. 1 featured Uma Thurman as a former assassin known as 'The Bride'. While the first film in the pair was an eye-popping homage to Asian cinema and all things extreme, the outrageous violence of Kill Bill Vol. 1 stood in stark contrast to the dialogue-driven second installment that concluded the epic tale of revenge and betrayal. The gambit of separate releases paid off, as both earned a combined sum of more than 130 million dollars domestically. In the wake of the Kill Bill films, rumors abounded concerning Tarantino's next feature. In 2005, Tarantino did step back into the director's chair to helm a segment of Robert Rodriguez's eagerly anticipated comic book adaptation Sin City. A longtime friend of Rodriguez, Tarantino agreed to take part in the filming of Sin City, not only to repay the versatile filmmaker for providing soundtrack music for the Kill Bill films but also to try his hand at digital filmmaking. Stephen Thomas Erlewine at AllMovie: "After this, the two directors joined forces again, for one of the most ballyhooed and hotly anticipated pictures of 2007: Grindhouse. A no-holds-barred elegy to the sleazy, seedy, often half-dilapidated inner-city theaters of the 1970s that would churn out similarly sleazy movies, Tarantino and Rodriguez divided Grindhouse into two portions: the first half, Death Proof, directed by Tarantino, starred Kurt Russell in homage to the high-octane auto thrillers of the '70s. Merging low-brow thrills with blunt, existential dialogue, the Tarantino segment garnered the lion's share of the film's considerable critical praise, although the three-hour-plus Grindhouse ultimately failed to connect with audiences, much to the dismay of The Weinstein Company, who released it." Separate versions of Death Proof and Rodriguez's Planet Terror were then prepped for European release, with Tarantino's effort screened in competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

In 2009 Quentin Tarantino issued Inglorious Basterds, a sprawling World War II epic about a band of Jewish American soldiers fighting an Apache resistance behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied France. The film, starring Brad Pitt, was a hit around the world and garnered Tarantino nominations from the Writers Guild, the Directors Guild, the Hollywood Foreign Press, and the Academy for his screenplay and his direction. He took three years to craft his follow-up, the revisionist Western Django Unchained (2012), a film about the revenge of a former slave (Jamie Foxx) in the U.S. South in 1858. The slave teams up with a bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) to get his wife away from a sadistic plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio). Django Unchained was another international box office hit, grossing over $425 million worldwide against its $100 million budget, becoming Tarantino's highest-grossing movie to date. It also earned a number of year-end awards including a second Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Tarantino. Quentin Tarantino's eighth film was the Western The Hateful Eight (2015), starring Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Bruce Dern, as eight strangers who seek refuge from a blizzard in a stagecoach stopover sometime after the American Civil War. The original score was Italian composer Ennio Morricone's first and only for a Tarantino film, his first complete Western score in thirty-four years. Daniel Gelb at AllMovie: "It's a viscerally bloody, chronologically fractured whodunit full of betrayal and biting wit. It's profane, protracted, violent, and yet another achievement in a career full of inspired filmmaking. After teasing what he could do with the Western genre in the good but not great Django Unchained, Tarantino's second consecutive Civil War-era picture is a fully realized epic. (...) Despite its three-hour runtime, its hold on the audience's attention never wavers. Tarantino's trademark dialogue (never known for its brevity) keeps us riveted inside Minnie's Haberdashery, and the stellar cast manages to bring out the deadpan hilarity in the script." Tarantino's ninth film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), turned out one of his best. It recounts an alternate history of events surrounding the Tate–LaBianca murders in 1969, and Leonard DiCaprio and Brad Pitt star as a fading actor and his stuntman. Providing a sense of intrigue during the long 161-minute runtime, the epic weaves in and out of tense moments and comedic relief. Travis Norris at AllMovie: "Hollywood is a great behind-the-scenes look into the end of an era. The film touches on the pursuit of perfection: how it is never obtainable yet always worth striving for. These are words that seem to drive Tarantino, and it is apparent while watching a film like this. A fun and genuine ride, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is a must-see." Since 20018, Quentin Tarantino is married to Israelian singer Daniella Pick.

Sources: Stephen Thomas Erlewine (AllMovie), Daniel Gelb (AllMovie), Travis Norris (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

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French postcard by Images - Distribution. Image: Photos D.R.

Every year, in the third week of May, international filmmakers, stars, film industry professionals and thousands of journalists go to the Côte d'Azur. They visit the most prestigious film festival in the world, the Cannes Film Festival (Festival de Cannes).

The Cannes Film Festival has been held every year in the French city of Cannes since 1946. The venue is the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès on the La Croisette promenade. The most important prize awarded at Cannes is the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) for the best film in the International Competition. The Golden Palm is sometimes shared by several films in the same year. Other prizes awarded by the jury for the film as a whole are (in descending order) the Grand Prize of the Jury (Grand prix du jury), the Prize of the Jury (Prix du Jury) and the Special Prize of the Jury (not necessarily awarded every year). There are also prizes in the individual categories of female actor, male actor, director and screenplay. The awards in Cannes are given by a jury made up of several people, usually experienced and award-winning professionals from the film industry. Other juries also award competition films here. The most important are the FIPRESCI Prize of International Film Critics (Prix de la FIPRESCI) and the Ecumenical Jury Prize (Prix du Jury oecuménique). In addition to the main competition, there is also the short film competition with the Palme d'Or for short films (Palme d'Or du court métrage), the Cinéfondation competition, in which works by film students are awarded, as well as the Un Certain Regard series, in which the Prix Un Certain Regard has been awarded since 1998. Within the framework of the international film festival, both the directors' association Société des Réalisateurs de Films with its La Quinzaine des Réalisateurs and the critics' organisation Syndicat français de la critique de cinéma with its La Semaine Internationale de la Critique hold their own independent parallel event at which a number of prizes are also awarded.

The Cannes Film Festival receives a lot of media attention, it is attended by many film stars and is a popular opportunity for film producers to present their new films and sell them to distributors. The film stars are transported in luxurious limousines to the famous red carpet, where they climb the "24 stairs to glory" and to be hidden from public view. From the 1950s onwards, Cannes became the biggest event in world cinema. Gradually, as the critic André Bazin wished, the festival became more concerned with cinema and less with mundanities, patriotism and diplomacy. Until the 1970s, embassies presented the films chosen by their governments. Major filmmakers presented major works at the festival: Roberto Rossellini, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Elia Kazan, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Robert Wise, William Wyler, Michelangelo Antonioni, Vittorio De Sica, Andrzej Wajda, Satyajit Ray, Luis Buñuel and Akira Kurosawa. In 1997, on the occasion of the 50th Cannes Film Festival, Ingmar Bergman was awarded the "Palm of Palms" in the presence of many previous winners.In 2012 the president of the Festival at the time, Gilles Jacob,expressed a regret about the monumentality of the event, which had lost its humanity compared to the time when Kirk Douglas played football with journalists and the stars walked to the beach: "The Festival should stop growing, so as not to become an embarrassment. Cannes is the most beautiful city for a film festival, but it must remain a pleasure, not a constraint. [...] There are more and more people and media who want to come, we can't forbid them. [...] When the stars come down to the bottom of the steps, some talk to people, others don't. Many give nothing but the usual, devote themselves to their work. Many just give the agreed upon, spend a short day with the press, and leave. It's almost like a factory."

The Cannes Film Festival was conceived on the initiative of the French Minister of Education and Culture, Jean Zay. Originally planned for 1939, the first Cannes International Film Festival took place for the first time from 20 September to 5 October 1946 due to the Second World War. In 1948 and 1950, the festival was cancelled due to financing difficulties. In 1955, the best film was awarded the Palme d'Or for the first time. The trophy, designed by French jeweller Lucienne Lazon, replaced the "Grand Prix" which had been awarded until then. As a result of the Paris May riots, the 1968 festival was cancelled on 19 May. Louis Malle had already resigned as a member of the jury the evening before. Malle, François Truffaut, Claude Berri, Jean-Gabriel Albicocco, Claude Lelouch, Roman Polański and Jean-Luc Godard invaded the Great Hall of the Palais des Festivals and demanded the interruption of the screening as a show of solidarity with the striking workers and students. The action was also seen as a response to the dismissal of Henri Langlois as director of the Cinémathèque française shortly before. In 2014, Gilles Jacob became honorary president after 38 years of directing the Festival, his successor is Pierre Lescure. The Film Market facilitates exchanges between buyers and sellers in the film industry and has become the world's leading platform for the international film trade. In 2007, it hosted over 10,000 participants from 91 countries. In 2017, the festival celebrated its 70th edition, inviting award-winning filmmakers and screenings of series by great filmmakers. Today, the official selection is intended to reflect the world's film production. The competition generally highlights auteur or research films. The question of creating an award for original music has been raised.

Sources: Wikipedia (French, Dutch and German).

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French postcard by Editions Cahiers de cinéma, Paris, 1997. Caption: Jack Nicholson, Festival de Cannes 1974.

Jack Nicholson (1937) is an American actor and filmmaker who has performed for over sixty years. His rise in Hollywood was far from meteoric, and for years, he sustained his career with guest spots in television series and a number of Roger Corman films. He is now known for playing a wide range of starring or supporting roles, including satirical comedy, romance, and dark portrayals of anti-heroes and villainous characters. In many of his films, he has played someone who rebels against the social structure. Nicholson's 12 Oscar nominations make him the most nominated male actor ever. He won the Oscars for Best Actor twice – for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), and As Good as It Gets (1997), and the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Terms of Endearment (1983).

Jack Nicholson was born in 1937 as John Joseph Nicholson in Neptune City, New Jersey. He was the son of a showgirl, June Frances Nicholson (stage name June Nilson). She married Italian-American showman Donald Furcillo (stage name Donald Rose) in 1936, before realising that he was already married. Biographer Patrick McGilligan stated in his book Jack's Life that Latvian-born Eddie King, June's manager, may have been Nicholson's biological father, rather than Furcillo. Other sources suggest June Nicholson was unsure of who the father was. As June was only seventeen years old and unmarried, her parents agreed to raise Nicholson as their own child without revealing his true parentage, and June would act as his sister. In 1974, Time magazine researchers learned, and informed Nicholson, that his 'sister', June, was actually his mother, and his other 'sister', Lorraine, was really his aunt. By this time, both his mother and grandmother had died (in 1963 and 1970, respectively). On finding out, Nicholson said it was "a pretty dramatic event, but it wasn't what I'd call traumatizing ... I was pretty well psychologically formed". Before starting high school, his family moved to an apartment in Spring Lake, New Jersey. When Jack was ready for high school, the family moved once more, to old-money Spring Lake, New Jersey's so-called Irish Riviera, where Ethel May set up her beauty parlor. 'Nick', as he was known to his high school friends, attended nearby Manasquan High School, where he was voted 'Class Clown' by the Class of 1954. In 1957, Nicholson joined the California Air National Guard. After completing the Air Force's basic training, Nicholson performed weekend drills and two-week annual training as a firefighter. Nicholson first came to Hollywood in 1954, when he was seventeen, to visit his sister. He took a job as an office worker for animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera at the MGM cartoon studio. He trained to be an actor with a group called the Players Ring Theater, after which time he found small parts performing on the stage and in TV soap operas. He made his film debut in a low-budget teen drama The Cry Baby Killer (Justus Addiss, 1958), playing the title role. For the following decade, Nicholson was a frequent collaborator with the film's producer, Roger Corman. Corman directed Nicholson on several occasions, most notably in The Little Shop of Horrors (Roger Corman, 1960), as masochistic dental patient and undertaker Wilbur Force, and also in The Raven (Roger Corman, 1963), The Terror (Roger Corman, 1963) as a French officer seduced by an evil ghost, and The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (Roger Corman, 1967). Nicholson also frequently worked with director Monte Hellman on low-budget Westerns, including the cult successes Ride in the Whirlwind (Monte Hellman, 1966) with Cameron Mitchell, and The Shooting (Monte Hellman, 1966) opposite Millie Perkins. Nicholson also appeared in episodes of TV series like Dr. Kildare (1966) and The Andy Griffith Show (1966-1967). However, Nicholson seemed resigned to a career behind the camera as a writer/director. His first real taste of writing success was the screenplay for the counterculture film The Trip (Roger Corman, 1967), which starred Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. Nicholson also co-wrote, with Bob Rafelson, Head (Bob Rafelson, 1968), which starred The Monkees. He also arranged the film's soundtrack. Nicholson's first turn in the director's chair was for Drive, He Said (1971).

Jack Nicholson had his acting break when a spot opened up in Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969). Nicholson played liquor-soaked lawyer George Hanson, for which he received his first Oscar nomination. The film cost only $400,000 to make, and became a blockbuster, grossing $40 million. Overnight, Nicholson became a hero of the counter-culture movement. Nicholson was cast by Stanley Kubrick, who was impressed with his role in Easy Rider, in the part of Napoleon in a film about his life, and although production on the film commenced, the project fizzled out, partly due to a change in ownership at MGM. Nicholson starred in Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970) alongside Karen Black. Bobby Dupea, an oil rig worker, became his persona-defining role. Nicholson and Black were nominated for Academy Awards for their performances. Critics began speculating whether he might become another Marlon Brando or James Dean. His career and income skyrocketed. Nicholson starred in Carnal Knowledge (Mike Nichols, 1971), which co-starred Art Garfunkel, Ann-Margret, and Candice Bergen. Other roles included Billy "Bad Ass" Buddusky in The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973). For his role, Nicholson won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, and he was nominated for his third Oscar and a Golden Globe. In 1974, Nicholson starred in Roman Polanski's majestic Film Noir Chinatown, opposite Faye Dunaway. For his role as private detective Jake Gittes, he was again nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor. The role was a major transition from the exploitation films of the previous decade. One of Nicholson's greatest successes came with his role as Randle P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Miloš Forman, 1975). It was an adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel and co-produced by Michael Douglas. Nicholson plays an anti-authoritarian patient at a mental hospital where he becomes an inspiring leader for the other patients. The film swept the Academy Awards with nine nominations, and won the top five, including Nicholson's first for Best Actor. Also that year, Nicholson starred in Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger (1975), which co-starred Maria Schneider. The film received good reviews and revived Antonioni's reputation as one of the cinema's great directors. He took a small role in The Last Tycoon (Elia Kazan, 1976), opposite Robert De Niro. He took a less sympathetic role in Arthur Penn's Western The Missouri Breaks (1976), specifically to work with Marlon Brando.

Although Jack Nicholson did not win an Oscar for Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining (1980), it remains one of his more significant roles. Nicholson improvised his now-famous "Here's Johnny!" line, along with the scene in which he's sitting at the typewriter and unleashes his anger upon his wife after she discovers he has gone insane when she looks at his writing ("all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" typed endlessly). In 1982, he starred as an immigration enforcement agent in The Border (Tony Richardson, 1982, co-starring Warren Oates. Nicholson won his second Oscar, an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his role of retired astronaut Garrett Breedlove in Terms of Endearment (James L. Brooks, 1983), starring Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger. He and MacLaine played many of their scenes in different ways, constantly testing and making adjustments. Nicholson continued to work prolifically in the 1980s, starring in such films as The Postman Always Rings Twice (Bob Rafelson, 1981), Reds (Warren Beatty, 1981), where Nicholson portrays the writer Eugene O'Neill with a quiet intensity, Prizzi's Honor (John Huston, 1985), The Witches of Eastwick (George Miller, 1987), Broadcast News (James L. Brooks, 1987), and Ironweed (Hector Babenco, 1987) with Meryl Streep. Three Oscar nominations also followed, for Reds, Prizzi's Honor, and Ironweed. In Batman (Tim Burton, 1989), Nicholson played the psychotic murderer and villain, the Joker. Batman creator Bob Kane personally recommended him for the role. The film was an international smash hit, and a lucrative percentage deal earned him a percentage of the box office gross estimated at $60 million to $90 million. For his role as hot-headed Col. Nathan R. Jessup in A Few Good Men (Rob Reiner, 1992), a film about a murder in a U.S. Marine Corps unit, Nicholson received yet another Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In 1996, Nicholson collaborated once more with Batman director Tim Burton on Mars Attacks!, pulling double duty as two contrasting characters, President James Dale and Las Vegas property developer Art Land. At first, studio executives at Warner Bros. disliked the idea of killing off Nicholson's character, so Burton created two characters and killed them both off. Not all of Nicholson's performances have been well received. He was nominated for Razzie Awards as worst actor for Man Trouble (Bob Rafelson, 1992) and Hoffa (Danny DeVito, 1992). However, Nicholson's performance in Hoffa also earned him a Golden Globe nomination. Nicholson went on to win his next Academy Award for Best Actor in the romantic comedy, As Good as It Gets (1997), his third film directed by James L. Brooks. He played Melvin Udall, a "wickedly funny", mean-spirited, obsessive-compulsive novelist. His Oscar was matched with the Academy Award for Best Actress for Helen Hunt, who played a Manhattan wisecracking, single-mother waitress drawn into a love/hate friendship with Udall, a frequent diner in the restaurant. The film was a tremendous box office success, grossing $314 million, which made it Nicholson's second-best-grossing film of his career, after Batman.

In About Schmidt (Alexander Payne, 2002), Nicholson portrayed a retired Omaha, Nebraska, actuary who questions his own life following his wife's death. His quietly restrained performance earned him another Oscar Nomination. In Anger Management (Peter Segal, 2003), he played an aggressive therapist assigned to help an over pacifist man (Adam Sandler). In 2003, Nicholson also starred in Something's Gotta Give (Nancy Meyers, 2003), as an aging playboy who falls for the mother (Diane Keaton) of his young girlfriend. In late 2006, Nicholson marked his return to the dark side as Frank Costello, a nefarious Boston Irish Mob boss, based on Whitey Bulger who was still on the run at that time, presiding over Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning film The Departed, a remake of Andrew Lau's Infernal Affairs. The role earned Nicholson worldwide critical praise, along with various award wins and nominations, including a Golden Globe nomination. In 2007, Nicholson co-starred with Morgan Freeman in The Bucket List (Rob Reiner, 2007) Nicholson and Freeman portrayed dying men who fulfill their list of goals. Nicholson reunited with James L. Brooks, director of Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, and As Good as It Gets, for a supporting role as Paul Rudd's character's father in How Do You Know (2012). It had been widely reported in subsequent years that Nicholson had retired from acting because of memory loss, but in a September 2013 Vanity Fair article, Nicholson clarified that he did not consider himself retired, merely that he was now less driven to "be out there any more". In 2015, Nicholson made a special appearance as a presenter on SNL 40, the 40th anniversary special of Saturday Night Live. After the death of boxer Muhammad Ali in 2016, Nicholson appeared on HBO's The Fight Game with Jim Lampley for an exclusive interview about his friendship with Ali. In 2017, it was reported that Nicholson would be starring in an English-language remake of Toni Erdmann opposite Kristen Wiig, but Nicholson dropped out of the project. does not consider himself to be retired. He has also directed three films, including The Two Jakes (1990), the sequel to Chinatown. Nicholson is one of three male actors to win three Academy Awards. He also has won six Golden Globe Awards. He has had a number of high-profile relationships and was married to Sandra Knight from 1962 until their divorce in 1968. Nicholson has five children. His eldest daughter is Jennifer Nicholson (1963), from his marriage to actress Sandra Knight. He has a son, Caleb James Goddard (1970) with Susan Anspach, and a daughter, Honey Hollman (1981) with Danish supermodel, Winnie Hollman. With Rebecca Broussard, he has two children, Lorraine Nicholson (1990) and Ray Nicholson (1992). Nicholson's longest relationship was the 17 years he spent with actress Anjelica Huston; this ended when Broussard become pregnant with his child. Jack Nicholson is the only actor to ever play the Devil, the Joker, and a werewolf.

Sources: Pedro Borges (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

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French postcard by Editions Cahiers de cinéma, Paris, 1997. Photo: Traverso. Caption: Jane Birkin, Festival de Cannes 1974.

In the Swinging Sixties, shy, awkward-looking British actress Jane Birkin (1946) made a huge international splash as one of the nude models in Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966). In France, she became the muse of singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, who wrote several of her albums, plus their explicitly erotic duet Je t'aime... moi non plus. Later she worked with such respected film directors as Jacques Rivette, Agnès Varda, and Jacques Doillon, and won several acting awards.

Jane Mallory Birkin was born in London in 1946. Her mother, Judy Campbell, was an English stage actress, and her father, David Birkin, was a Royal Navy lieutenant-commander, who had worked on clandestine operations as a navigator with the French Resistance. Her brother is the screenwriter and director Andrew Birkin. She was educated at Upper Chine School, Isle of Wight, and then went to Kensington Academy in London. At 17, she first went on stage in Graham Greene's 1964 production Carving a Statue. A year later she was chosen to play in the musical comedy Passion Flower Hotel with music by John Barry (composer of the James Bond theme). They met and married shortly afterward. Their daughter Kate Barry, now a photographer, was born in 1967. Jane emerged in the Swinging London scene of the 1960s. First, she appeared uncredited as a girl on a motorbike in the comedy The Knack …and How to Get It (Richard Lester, 1965) starring Rita Tushingham. Then she attracted attention with a brief scene as a nude, blonde model in Blowup (1966), Michelangelo Antonioni's scandalous masterpiece that received the Palme d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1968, Birkin played a fantasy-like model in the psychedelic picture Wonderwall (Joe Massot, 1968). That same year, she auditioned in France for the lead female role in Slogan (Pierre Grimblat, 1969) with pop star Serge Gainsbourg, who was still grieving after his break up with Brigitte Bardot. Jane barely spoke French, and Gainsbourg gave her a rough time. When she burst into tears, mixing private sadness about John Barry and the film part, he disapproved, but he recognised that she cried well in front of the camera. Jane got the part, and a mythical and passionate Paris love story began. Birkin performed with Gainsbourg on the film's theme song, La chanson de slogan — the first of many collaborations between the two. They became inseparable and a living legend when they recorded the duet Je t'aime... moi non plus (I love you... me neither), a song Gainsbourg originally had written for Brigitte Bardot. The song's fame is partly a result of its salacious lyrics, sung by Gainsbourg and Birkin to a background of passionate whispering and moaning from Birkin, concluding in her simulated orgasm. Censorship in several countries went wild, the Vatican condemned the immoral nature of the song, and in Great Britain, the BBC refused to play the original and did their own orchestral version. The record benefited from all the free publicity and rocketed straight to the top of the charts, selling a million copies in a matter of months.

At the Côte d'Azur, Jane Birkin played in the thriller La Piscine/The Swimming Pool (Jacques Deray, 1969) in which she was seduced by Alain Delon. Then she went with Serge Gainsbourg to Yugoslavia to play in the adventure film Romansa konjokradice/Romance of a horse thief (Abraham Polonsky, 1971) starring Yul Brynner. In 1971 her daughter, the actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg was born. Birkin took a break from acting, but returned as the lover of Brigitte Bardot (in her final film role) in Don Juan ou Si Don Juan était une femme.../Don Juan 73 (Roger Vadim, 1973). Her first solo album, Di Doo Dah, was also released in 1973. The title song became another chart hit. In the cinema, Birkin played 'cute but stupid' roles in box office hits such as La moutarde me monte au nez/Lucky Pierre (Claude Zidi, 1974) and La course à l’échalotte/The Wild Goose Chase (Claude Zidi, 1975), two popular comedies starring Pierre Richard. She proved herself as a film actress in Le Mouton enragé/Love at the Top (Michel Deville, 1974) starring Romy Schneider, and the highly dramatic Sept morts sur ordonnance/Seven Deaths by Prescription (Jacques Rouffio, 1975) opposite Michel Piccoli. In 1975, she also appeared with Joe Dallesandro in Gainsbourg's daring directorial début Je t'aime... moi non plus (Serge Gainsbourg, 1976). The film created a stir for its frank examination of sexual ambiguity and the controversial sex scenes. For her performance as an androgynous-looking teenager, she was nominated for a Best Actress César Award. In the meantime, her second album Lolita go home (1975) came out, on which she sang Philippe Labro's lyrics set to Gainsbourg's music. Three years later, her Ex-fan des sixties (1978) was released. Birkin appeared in a series of mainstream films such as the Agatha Christie films Death on the Nile (John Guillermin, 1978) and Evil Under the Sun (Guy Hamilton, 1982), with Peter Ustinov as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. In the arthouse production Egon Schiele Exzess und Bestrafung/Egon Schiele: Excess and Punishment (Herbert Vesely, 1980), she appeared as the mistress of Austrian artist Egon Schiele, played by Mathieu Carrière.

Serge Gainsbourg had plunged into several major bouts of alcoholism and depression, resulting in all-night partying and scandals, and in 1980 Jane Birkin left him. The couple remained on good terms though. Birkin starred as Anne in La fille prodigue/The Prodigal Daughter (Jacques Doillon, 1981). Jacques Doillon proved to be her dream of a director, who imposed his own personal style of drama and brought out the very best of her. She went to live with him, and in 1982 she had her third daughter Lou Doillon. She also appeared as Alma opposite Maruschka Detmers in his La pirate/The Pirate (Jacques Doillon, 1984), for which she was nominated for a César Award. This work led to an invitation from theatre director Patrice Chéreau to star on stage in La Fausse suivante (The False Servant) by Pierre de Marivaux. Gainsbourg, suffering from the separation, wrote Baby alone in Babylone for her. The record won the Charles Cross award and became a gold record. She began to appear frequently on stage in plays and concerts in France, Japan, the U.K., and then the U.S. Film director Jacques Rivette collaborated with her in L'amour par terre/Love on the Ground (Jacques Rivette, 1983) starring Geraldine Chaplin, and La Belle Noiseuse/The Beautiful Troublemaker (Jacques Rivette, 1991) with Michel Piccoli and Emmanuelle Béart. Again Birkin was nominated for the César for the best supporting actress, for the latter. She created a sensation as star and screenwriter of director Agnès Varda's Kung Fu Master (1987), in which she played a 40-year-old woman carrying on a torrid affair with a 15-year-old boy, played by Mathieu Demy, Varda's son. The following year, Varda expressed her admiration for Birkin with the feature-length documentary Jane B. par Agnes V (Agnès Varda, 1988).

Jane Birkin’s work in Dust (Marion Hänsel, 1985) with Trevor Howard and Daddy Nostalgie (Bertrand Tavernier, 1990) opposite Dirk Bogarde also earned her the praise and respect of international critics. Additionally, she appeared in Merchant Ivory's A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (James Ivory, 1998) and Merci Docteur Rey (Andrew Litvack, 2002) with Dianne Wiest, while the end title song of Le Divorce (James Ivory, 2003) featured her singing L'Anamour, composed by Serge Gainsbourg. In 1990 Serge Gainsbourg dedicated a new album to her: Amours des feintes. It was to be his last. He died in 1991. A year later Birkin won the Female Artist of the Year award at the 1992 Victoires de la Musique. In 1993 she separated from Jacques Doillon. In the following years, she devoted herself to her family and to her humanitarian work with Amnesty International on immigrant welfare and AIDS issues. Birkin visited Bosnia, Rwanda, and Palestine, often working with children. In 2001, she was awarded the OBE in Great Britain. She has also been awarded the French Ordre national du Mérite in 2004. Jane Birkin continues to make films, theatre, and music. She collaborated with such artists as Bryan Ferry, Manu Chao, Françoise Hardy, Rufus Wainwright, and Les Negresses Vertes on albums as Rendez-Vous (2004) and Fictions (2006). The self-penned Enfants d'Hiver arrived in 2008. In 2006, Birkin played the title role in Elektra, directed by Philippe Calvario in France. At the Cannes Film Festival 2007, she presented a film, both as a director and actor: Boxes (2007) with Michel Piccoli, Geraldine Chaplin, and her daughter Lou Doillon. She also appeared in Si tu meurs, je te tue/If you die, I’ll kill you (Hiner Saleem, 2011) with Jonathan Zaccaï, and La femme et le TGV/The Railroad Lady (2016), a short film directed by Swiss filmmaker Timo von Gunten. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. In a 2017 interview, Birkin stated that La femme et le TGV would be her final acting performance and that she had no plans to return to acting. In March 2017, Jane Birkin released Birkin/Gainsbourg: Le Symphonique, a collection of songs Serge Gainsbourg had written for her during and after their relationship, reworked with full orchestral arrangements.

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), John Bush (AllMusic), RFI Musique, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

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