Michèle Morgan

Michèle Morgan was born Simone Renée Roussel on Feb. 29, 1920 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France. By age 15, she was so devoted to a career in acting that she left home to study under Le Cours Simon drama school founder René Simon, paying for courses via background work in films. After a slew of nonspeaking parts, Morgan was discovered by Marc Allégret, who cast the aspiring actress in her first featured roles in the comedy film "Heart of Paris" (1937) and the drama "Storm" (1938). Immediately after this breakout, the French film scene observed a steep incline in Morgan's notability, as she starred at the head of successful films like "Port of Shadows" (1939) and "Coral Reefs" (1939). However, World War II forced Morgan to relocate to the United States. She continued her film career in Hollywood, she starred in such films as "Joan of Paris" (1942), "Higher and Higher" (1943), and "Passage to Marseilles" (1944). During this period, she married director and performer William Marshall and gave birth to a son, Mike Marshall, who'd likewise become an actor. Upon returning to France, Morgan made some of her most critically revered pictures yet, including the Cannes Film Festival debut "La Symphonie Pastorale" (1946), for which she earned the fest's Best Actress superlative, and "The Fallen Idol" (1948). The 1950s proved a particularly busy decade for Morgan, yielding a second marriage to actor Henri Vidal, as well as "The Proud and the Beautiful" (1953), "The Grand Maneuver" (1955), "Shadow of the Guillotine" (1956), and "Love on the Riviera" (1958), among more than a dozen others. Following a divorce from Vidal in 1959, Morgan married actor and writer Gérard Oury. Though she continued acting through the 1960s, she balanced her time with a newfound interesting in painting. She appeared in the occasional picture throughout the 1970s, '80s, and '90s before retiring from acting altogether. Morgan died on Dec. 20, 2016 at age 96.