Lise Bourdin, iconic french model, actress, dead at 99

Lise Bourdin, one of France’s most recognisable fashion models of the 1940s and ’50s who later transitioned to film, has died at 99.

Her family told AFP that she passed away Friday at her home in Labastide-d’Armagnac, just two days before her birthday.

With her brown hair and striking blue eyes, Bourdin became a favourite of major European magazines before moving into cinema.

She shared the screen with stars including Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier in Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon (1957), where she played one of the many women drawn to Cooper’s American playboy.

Bourdin also appeared opposite Sophia Loren in The River Girl (1954), Linda Darnell and Vittorio De Sica in It Happens in Roma (1955), and Eddie Constantine in Dishonorable Discharge (1957), portraying a fashion editor under extreme pressure.

Born November 30, 1925, in Néris-les-Bains, she entered modeling by chance. A man who spotted her at a train station introduced her to a photographer. 

“I made an appointment with [a photographer] and the cover was published immediately,” she said in a 2017 interview. She soon graced the covers of Marie-Claire, Noir et Blanc and Harper’s Bazaar. 

Life magazine featured her in 1946 as a “youngster with a fresh country look,” calling her a “Paris sensation.” Reflecting on it years later, she noted, “Few French women have had two pages in Life. There was [Brigitte] Bardot, [Jeanne] Moreau and me.”

Her film career began with Les Enfants de l’amour (1953), and by Cannes 1954 she was making headlines, even spotted around town with Robert Mitchum. 

After two final releases in 1959, she walked away from acting. “The press didn’t like me… I told myself that I would never have the career I deserved, so I stopped.”

Bourdin married once, briefly, and later spent 30 years with Raymond Marcellin, France’s former Interior Minister, until his death in 2004.