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WP's Homage to  Anny Duperey

Personal record: quick biography

Extensive data about Anny Duperey's career and biographical info with sufficient details and photos as well one will find - not astounding - especially in French-language context. Thus especially Anny Duperey's unofficial fan site (anny-duperey.chez-alice.fr) presents a lot of info and numerous images. There one will find up-to-date info, news and a forum, too. By all means really worth to visit.

Language barrier - you don't speak French? I'm facing the same problem - therefore here on the right the link to a summary of several French sources - especially out of interviews - and further info in English. (Not to be forgotten here: Merci beaucoup, Laure, for your very kind support!)
To follow just a brief dossier.

Anny Duperey, autograph card photo

Expressive statement of the French TV magazine Télé-7-Jours about the TV staging of the Giraudoux drama La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu (Engl.: The Trojan War will not take place or Tiger at the Gates), 1981:

The dramatic performances are magnificent at all: One couldn't have imagined a better one as Hèléne - downright the symbol of beauty - than Anny Duperey.

Even the US Playboy magazine has taken notice of her and has appointed her to be one of the »Sex Stars of 1977«. Probably because of Pardon mon Affaire, 1976 (the original of Woman in Red; César nomination).
And at least the French readers appreciate her so much as author that her books have got (partly award winning) best-sellers. Some are even available as translations and were published among others in English, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch and Chinese.

A filmography of the most beautiful actress especially well-known in France and francophone countries you will find for instance in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com), an English listing of her appearance in movies, on TV and on stage.
Often she plays in TV mini serials and also she has already repeatedly received the 7 d'Or TV award. In Canada she was chosen as best actress of the year and she names many other awards her own.
DVDs, videos and books are available besides Amazon e.g. at Alapage.fr and FNAC.fr. And find some cinema posters or video covers at Moviecovers.com. Just search for duperey there.

But in real she likes to be a stage actress. About half a dozen times she has been nominated for the Molière. In fact she comes from the theater academy and not from the model scene, although one just doesn't really think so due to her appearance.

Nevertheless sympathically she has completely remained natural. Why - she already explained in 1977, when a smooth way to Hollywood was opened (Bobby Deerfield, 1977):

I shall not become a great star like »my friend« Al Pacino - but I really don't want this at all. To be a star changes the character - I could tell of some examples...

[Source: Ulla Reimer in Die erfolgreiche Frau mit den vielen Eisen im Feuer (Engl.: The successful woman who has many strings to her bow), Cinema 2/1977 and Abendpost November 12th 1977.]

By the way - Anny Duperey is member of an artist family: Her great-uncle was the impressionist Claude Monet, her father, Lucien Legras, a famous photographer. [Source: Star Card on the left.]

Honi soit qui mal y pense

(Engl.: A villain is who thinks evil of it; inscription on the English Order of the Garter)

Anny Duperey, autograph card photo

Picture at an exhibition

Emergency, the booth service on the measurement trade fair started to get boring, therefore I played a little with the computer. In the Recycle Bin I discovered old files, obviously also some from running-in the video processing system. One of the screenshots showed Anny Duperey in the party scene of Pardon mon Affaire. I was about to shut it, when someone asked me from the rear how many hours it had taken to draw this portrait. »Fractions of a second, a framegrabber needs not more.« After a few seconds break: »Wait, does that mean the lady in the image does exist in reality?« Bewilderedly the computer scientist fetched his colleague who admires her as well. When they had just said good-bye, a voice behind me asked »We are here by pure chance, but would you mind showing the photo of the lady again?«. Astounded I turned, three fairgoers friendly nodding to me and started to view the picture devoutly. Some minutes later when they had just left thanking an affable sales manager, type cruise captain - blue, striped double-breasted suit, gold buttons, twinkling jacket crowns, golden Rolex, ... - of the neighbor booth of the major enterprises approached »Young fellow, you don't really want to claim, this lady works in your company, don't you?!« Surprised I denied. But considered afterwards admission fee would have paid itself more than the trade fair.

(Also as screen saver the photo causes a crowd around the PC monitor. Even in the office ;-)
Make an educated guess of what you think of, when you park in the underground garage after you have seen her in the dancing scene of Pardon mon Affaire.

Belle Hélène - sum of beauty

»Deine blauen Augen machen mich so sentimental. So blaue Augen.«

(Song title of Ideal, Engl.: Your blue eyes make me so sentimental. Such blue eyes.)

Exactly, I carefully prepared myself to get in contact (about the year 15 A.D. ;-) and I struggled through to write to her agency: Both signatures displayed in the flag graphic above are from the autograph card and the reply she signed and sent. And the high-speed thinker I am has realized only after all these years that she looks, at least sometimes, somehow dreamy even close up to melancholy and almost I should have addressed her to this case...

Farou (Jean Rochefort) to Fanny (Anny Duperey) in La Seconde: »You are looking so pretty but so blue. Are you blue then?«

But then I have happened to stumble over her autobiography - my worst foreboding I should have wanted to clear in a maybe optional conversation very carefully (of course, preferably I should have seen them scattered!) unfortunately have been confirmed.
But, however, I wasn't really through with the complete matter yet..., for details refer to [Anny Time]. Or to say it with Thomas Wolfe in Dark in the Forest, strange as Time:

[...] a woman so beautiful that the remembrance of her should haunt the memory of the one who saw her for ever [...].

Anny Duperey as author

Anny Duperey
autogograph card photo

Extract out of the German pocket book edition of her extraordinary remarkable and famous autobiography Le voile noir (Seuil, 1992; Engl.: The Black Veil). It is her attempt to overcome the heavy blow determining her entire life: At eight she lost her parents in an - well, let's say - accident. They suffocated in the bathroom. And Anny happened to find them.

It is none of the usual star autobiographies. One is not told which in-drinks together with which in-people in which in-bars were en vogue e.g. in the late summer of 1973. It is very private, frank, even close up to a sober clear off. Without self-adulation, without lachrymose attitude, but sometimes almost without mercy for herself - and the reader. Nevertheless, there is enough room for pointed thoughts. Not for nothing the book was for weeks at the top of the French best-sellers.

At present I have a cat that is allowed to sit down in the middle of the table and to put its nose into my children's plates without causing me to react in the least. I know this maybe surprising. The explanation, however, is just very simple: For many years I have shared my bed and my plate with cats without any negative effects.
[...] I inherit my need for physical nearness towards those animals I like from her [the grandmother]. And my opinion that animals have an equal right to take part in the family life probably derives from her, too.

They were twenty years old. They worked in the same photo store. They liked each other. And my father had asked his pretty colleague to pose for nude photos in order to do some illumination studies yet...
I don't know which artistic result these nightly sessions had, anyhow they had another very obvious result: me.

End of Le voile noir or its continuation, so she calls it, is Les chats de hasard (Seuil, 1999; Engl.: Cats of Destiny). Even if it is hard to imagine: An even more personal book of a cat loving woman not only for other cat lovers. Therefore for weeks on top of the French best-sellers, too.

Anny Duperey, photo also used on TV

[...] People who love cats adore the cats' independence, because that guarantees their own freedom. They don't stand restrictions neither for themselves nor for others. They have this pride that those who love them should choose them each day without restrictions and could go anytime completely without any closed doors, leashes, negotiations. [...]

 

So I ran to the pharmacist, who always discreetly suppresses a laugh attack when I rush into his shop, because after I had already bought baby antibiotics for my cat once, and another time mother milk replacement for a squirrel, now it concerns baby pap for a bird - »Neutral or with the taste of vanilla?« he asked mischievously.

All for nothing but the cat (Animal Farm):

Farm

(Exactly what I say all the time, too: Not the cat is humanized, but the human being is cat-ized :-)

Photos and screenshots

Extension: The hyperlinks in the text above are linking to sites hosting additional images and info.
Find more screenshots, photos and informative links in the kaleidoscope.