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Jacqueline Bisset
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Jacqueline Bisset (born Winifred Jacqueline Fraser-Bisset on 13 September 1944) is an English actress.
Contents
- 1 Biography
- 1.1 Early life
- 1.2 Career
- 1.3 Personal life
- 1.4 Bisset in popular culture
- 2 Selected Filmography
- 3 Footnotes
- 4 External links
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Biography
Early life
Bisset was born in Weybridge, Surrey to Max Fraser-Bisset, a Scottish General Practitioner, and the former Arlette Alexander, a lawyer of French and English descent; Bisset's mother cycled from Paris and boarded a British trooper in order to escape the Germans during WWII.[1] Bisset has a brother, Max. Bisset's mother taught her to speak French fluently and she was educated at the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle in London. When Bisset was a teenager, her mother was diagnosed with disseminating sclerosis. Bisset's parents divorced in 1968, after 28 years of marriage.[1] Bisset subsequently moved in to help her mother. She had taken ballet lessons as a young child, and now began taking acting lessons and fashion modelling to pay for them.
Career
In 1967, Bisset was cast in the critically acclaimed movie
Two for the Road. Next, she participated in the
James Bond spoof
Casino Royale (1967), as
Miss Goodthighs. In 1968,
Mia Farrow dropped out of a movie named
The Detective (1968), and the role went to Bisset. She was cast opposite
Steve McQueen in
Bullitt in 1968 and appeared in the 1970
disaster film Airport.
In 1973, she appeared in François Truffaut's Day for Night, where she earned the respect of European critics and moviegoers as a serious actress. In 1977, Bisset made great strides towards becoming a better known entertainer in America with her movie The Deep (1977),[2] co-starring Robert Shaw, where her appearance swimming underwater wearing only a T-shirt helped make the film a box office smash, leading the producer Jon Peters to say, "That T-shirt made me a rich man",[3] and led many to credit her with popularizing the wet T-shirt contest. At the time, Newsweek magazine declared her to be "the most beautiful film actress of all time". Her wet T-shirt scene also made an adolescent Rosie O'Donnell realize that she was a lesbian.[4][5]
By 1978, she was a household name. She earned her first Golden Globe nomination for the comedy Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?. Soon thereafter, she played in the movies Rich and Famous (1981) with Candice Bergen, and Under the Volcano with Albert Finney (1984), for which she earned her a second Golden Globe award nomination. In 1996, she was nominated for a César Award, France's version of the Oscars, for her role in La Cérémonie. During her career, Bisset has worked with such well-respected directors as Truffaut, John Huston, George Cukor and Roman Polański. Several of her movies are French or Italian productions.
Bisset has also appeared in many made-for-TV movies, especially during the past ten years, some of which have been quite successful. One of her later TV movies, released in 2003, was America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story, in which she portrayed Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Bisset's most recent television work was a recurring role as the mysterious James, during the fourth season of the FX show Nip/Tuck.
Personal life
Though she has been romantically linked with many actors, Bisset has never married. Bisset is the godmother to actress
Angelina Jolie. She appeared with Jolie in the film
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005); however, the scenes never made the final cut.
Unlike many actresses of her generation who have had difficulty finding work after the age of 40, Bisset made a seamless transition from leading lady to character actor. She remains very much in demand both in Hollywood and Europe. She told a Bermuda newspaper in 2004:
[6]
"This film business, perhaps more so in America than in Europe, has always been about young sexuality. It's not true of theatre, but in America, film audiences are young and they go to the cinema to see the sort of romance or adventure that appeals to them. It's not an intellectual cinema in America. But one mustn't be too greedy. One wants to be stimulated by the work as long as there is something to give. I think you have to be as flexible as possible. Perhaps you don't get handed the big American productions, but, quite honestly, who would want to be in a lot of them? Many of them are just puerile teenage filler, and they're not fascinating to be in. To be used in a part without depth is a frustrating feeling, when you know you have something to give, and the camera just sort of brushes past you, and doesn't get what you have to give. Most actresses I know are frustrated, but you have to adapt to the reality. I go and find a small part in something I find interesting, or find an independent film".
Bisset in popular culture
In the NBC TV show Cheers, the episode "Bar Bet" has Sam Malone faced with a bet made with an old drinking buddy a long time ago. The bet: he would marry Jacqueline Bisset by a certain date or lose his bar. Rather than losing the bet because he'll never marry the Jacqueline Bisset, or welching on the bet and having to admit under oath that he was drunk when he made the bet, he instead locates an American woman with the exact same name and brings her back to Boston.
Bisset is mentioned by name in the Al Stewart song "Clifton in the Rain."
In the HBO TV show The Larry Sanders Show, Artie says he once dated Bisset.
Selected Filmography
Footnotes
