From the “Fantômas” trilogy in the 1960s to “Camping” half a century later, each generation remembers Mylene Demongeot, the acclaimed actress who died Thursday after a career spanning 70 years.
Not limited to the popular cinema that made her famous, the actress would have made a total of 70 films with Jean Marais or Yves Montand and Roger Moore. He died on Thursday at the age of 87 in a Paris hospital.
With blonde hair, a smiling face, and roles in theater and television, Myleene Demonchot has often been compared to, and rivaled by, Brigitte Bardot, who shared the same love of animals and the environment.
In 2022, he was in demand until the end, in the comedy “Retirement Home” with Kev Adams and Gérard Depardieu, one of the rare French films to cross two million.
Born in Nice on September 29, 1935 to an Italian father and a Ukrainian mother, Mylene Demonchot (real name Marie-Hélène) began piano lessons at the age of 7, which she pursued diligently in Paris with her masters. Marguerite Long. But at 15, he gave up on becoming a concert artist and took theater lessons.
Alongside her first small roles in cinema from 1953, she posed for publicity photos and fell in love with photographer Henry Kost, whom she married in 1958. One of these scenes convinced him and caught the attention of Raymond Rouleau. The role of Abigail in the adaptation of “Witches of Salem” (1957).
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He would follow up the following year with Otto Preminger’s “Bonjour Tragedy” and Marc Allegret’s “Be Beau Beauté and Shut Up.” He left for Italy, where he became famous with a peplum, “La Bataille de Marathon”, and later with Mauro Bolognini’s “Les Garçons” with Laurent Tersif.
In the 1960s, she became Milady de Winter in Bernard Bartery’s “The Three Musketeers,” but became Helen’s correspondent photographer in Andre Huenebel’s “Fandomas” series, shot with Jean Marais and Louis de Funes.
He has partnered some of the most famous actors of their generation: Kurt Jurgens, David Niven, Dirk Bogarde, Sammy Frey…
In the late 1960s, she met the love of her life, director Marc Simenon, son of writer Georges Simenon, whom she married in 1968. Their love defied Mark’s “alcoholism” and only his accidental death in 1999 separated them.
In 2004, she made a comeback to cinema with Olivier Marchel’s “36 Qui des Orfèvres”, which earned her a 2005 César nomination and breathed new life into her career.
She later returned to popular films such as the “Camping” trilogy, but also to auteur cinema, where she was particularly noted for her portrayal of Thérèse in “Les Toits de Paris” by Heiner Salim (2007).
“Mylène Demongeot was a committed actress, sensitive, especially in the cause of animals and the environment and in defense of the right to die with dignity”, her relatives underlined in the press release announcing her death.
In 2019, he wrote several books, including “The Animals of My Life”, “My Secret Monsters” and “Dearest Crooks”, detailing his financial setbacks with a banker for defrauding famous clients.
“Pop culture practitioner. Award-winning tv junkie. Creator. Devoted food geek. Twitter lover. Beer enthusiast.”
