Nicole Françoise Florence Dreyfus

Nicole Françoise Florence Dreyfus was born in Paris to actor parents. Of Jewish descent, she survived the German occupation by adopting her mother's surname, Durand, and hiding in boarding schools. At age 14, poet Jacques Prévert suggested her stage name, "Anouk Aimée" (Anouk Loved), while writing the screenplay for her early film The Lovers of Verona (1949).

Aimée became an international icon of arthouse cinema. Federico Fellini cast her in two crowning masterpieces: as the wealthy, bored aristocrat Maddalena in La Dolce Vita (1960) and as Marcello Mastroianni's long-suffering intellectual wife Luisa in 8½ (1963). In 1966, she starred opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant in Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman (Un homme et une femme), winning the Golden Globe for Best Actress and becoming the first actress nominated for an Academy Award for a French-language role. She won Best Actress at Cannes in 1980 for Marco Bellocchio's A Leap in the Dark.