Stephane Audran: In Memoriam

By Gabrielle Garrieux

She was the muse, and later wife, of director Claude Chabrol. I remember Stephane Audran for her cool elegance, resonant voice and unlimited ability. She was also a good interview; no matter the time or the subject she always acted as if she was glad to sit down with me, a fact I always appreciated. I shall miss her.

While in America she was mainly known for her role as the title character in the 1987 film Babette’s Feast, the Oscar winner that year for Best Foreign Film, she was known in France for her films with husband, director Claude Chabrol. She also made quite an impression with her performance in Luis Bunuel’s 1972 surrealist classic The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.      

Born Colette Suzanne Dacheville in Versailles, France, on Nov. 8, 1932, her physician father died when she was only 6 years old, leaving her to be raised by her mother. Besides the loss of her father Stephane battled health problems. Until the age of 15 she suffered from renal colic pain and colibacillosis, a condition in the intestinal tract caused by the bacterium e.coli. Having lost her first daughter, her mother was obsessed with Stéphane's health, treating her with thermal baths and hot water packs.  

In interviews she said that to alleviate the pain of losing her father and her physical condition she was attracted to acting, often dressing up to pretend to be other people. 

“My mother never approved of my desire to act,” she told me, “and needless to say, she was quite perturbed when she would catch me playing dress-up. But over the years my persistence wore her down to the point where she allowed me to take acting classes. I think my recovery from illness also helped change her mind.” 

It was in acting school that she met classmate Jean-Louis Trintignant, who became her first husband. “The relationship between Jean-Louis and I was like an on-set romance. We got married before we had the chance to learn how different we were. We were only married for two years. He left me to pursue Brigitte Bardot.” (They worked together in the 1956 movie And God Created Woman.)

After the divorce both work together in a few films, including the 1968 drama Les Biches (“The Does”), directed by her husband. Trintignant would later be quoted in interviews that he was a bit embarrassed to play erotic scenes with his ex-wife in front of her husband, but Stephane told me he was exaggerating. “An actor takes on any situation.”

She was cast in several plays on the Parisian stage, but without much success. Her first film role was in the 1957 drama Le Jeu de la Nuit (“The Game of the Night”). The next year she appeared in two movies, but in 1959 Claude Chabrol cast her as Francoise in his film Les Cousins. The back story is that she heard he was making the film and asked Gerald Blain, another acting school classmate, if he could put in a good word for her. Blain, who had starred in Chabrol’s debut hit, Le Beau Serge, introduced her to the director. She made quite a favorable impression, and the two began dating shortly after. Other films with Chabrol followed, and in 1964, they married.

The next year Chabrol directed her in Les Bonnes Femmes (“The Good Girls”). It was there she met Bernadette Lafont, who would become her best friend and confidant. After Lafont died Stephane took part in a public memorial, reading extracts from Bernard Bastide's biography Bernadette Lafont, a Life in the Cinema. Filmed by Gerald Courant, it was later shown on French television.

Sometimes, though, being a muse could be tough. Chabrol frequently cast her (they eventually made 24 films together), but at this stage Stephane was not exactly a great actress, and her appearances were never greeted by critics with any enthusiasm. And it wasn’t only the critics. While filming Bluebeard in 1963 for Chabrol, producer Carlo Ponti was so appalled by her performance that he asked: “Who’s that slut playing Fernande?” Chabrol walked over to Ponti and slapped him across the face. “That ‘slut,’ as you call her, just happens to be my fiancee!” 

As the years passed, and Stephane’s acting improved, Chabrol, starting with Les Biches, began casting her in roles that better suited her talents. (Often she played ice-cold bourgeois women with vague overtones of class consciousness that later led to sexual violence.) This change in strategy paid off for both director and star with a series of popular and critically acclaimed thrillers, including a cheating spouse who gains a new respect for her foppish husband after he kills her lover in La Femme Infidele (“The Unfaithful Wife,” 1969), Le Boucher (“The Butcher,” 1970), La Rupture (“The Breach,” also 1970), Les noces rouges (“Red Wedding,” 1974), The Twist (1976) and as the working-class mother of a notorious 1930s Parisian teenage murderess of the (Isabelle Huppert) in Violette Noziere (1978), for which she won France’s Cesar Award for Best Supporting Actress.

“I owed everything to him,” she said. “He believed in me when others didn’t and supported me come what may. I wasn’t the greatest actress, and if not for Claude I just would have been an excellent cook, perhaps a chef in a restaurant.” For his part Chabrol said in interviews it was while filming the bus scene in La Rupture when her character Helene tells her family’s story to her lawyer that he finally thought she had become an actress.

But their marriage failed to survive, and in 1980 they were divorced. The union was outwardly successful and produced a son, Thomas (born in 1963), now an actor himself.

Even a divorce could not break the tie they had forged. Stephane’s role as Babette Hersant, a political refugee from Paris seeking asylum in a Danish coastal village in Babette’s Feast came about as a result Chabrol recommending her to director Gabriel Axel.

Axel had narrowed his list to two actresses: Stephane and Catherine Deneuve. Chabrol helped clinch it for Stephane when he informed Axel of Stephane’s prowess as a cook. (In fact, both Stephane and Claude were gourmands who frequently liked to whip up a meal together in their kitchen and often brought their creations onto the set for others to share.) This was important, for the character was shown to be an artist at the stove, a point that is revealed through the sumptuous meal she prepares for a group of the village’s dour, uptight inhabitants. 

She also appeared in English-language productions, most notably as Sir Laurence Olivier’s Italian mistress in the1981 production of Brideshead Revisited. She also starred in the 1974 film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, The Black Bird (1975), The Big Red One (1980, as a Belgian resistance fighter), The Sun also Rises (1984), and even as Jean-Claude Van Damme’s mother in Maximum Risk (1996). However, her success in Hollywood was ultimately diminished by what was referred to as her “phonetic and rigid” line readings in heavily accented English.

Stephane Audran passed away March 27, at the age of 85, saying farewell at home after a lengthy illness. France’s Minister of Culture, Françoise Nyssen, announced her death on Twitter, remarking that “her presence, her elegance and her inimitable voice remain and resonate.” Truer words were never spoken.