Jeanne Moreau

"And then backstage one night came a young man named Louis Malle," she tells me. "At the time I had a very serious agent who managed big stars. And this young man said, 'I've been filming with Cousteau, underwater -- that's all I've done, but I've bought the rights to a book, and I want to make a film, and I'd like you to be the star. And it's called "Elevator to the Gallows."'

"And I liked this group of young men -- young writer, young producer, young director. And I spoke to my agent about that, and he said, 'That's horrible! I've been working like mad to establish a real career [for you], and then you fall in love with these guys just because it's new. You don't know anything! This guy has only been filming fishes underwater! What does he know about a woman! A star?' I said, 'I like them. I'm going to meet them again and he's going to give me a script.'

"So I met them again, and I saw my agent and said, 'I like them. I'm going to make the film.' And he said, 'Well, it's them or me.' I said, 'OK, it's them. I'll find another agent, because I won't find anybody else like these people.' Through Louis Malle, I met Francois Truffaut, then I got in touch again with Orson Welles, then I met Tony Richardson, then I met Buñuel -- I was thinking, in fact, that was the moment in my life where I broke a taboo. It was my father's will power, trying to please him. I still think about it, though he died in 1974.

"But I'd done my best, and I don't regret I worked in a certain discipline. I learned a lot. I respect other people's time. I'm very professional, but that's my nature. I work very deep. I had a knowledge of the cinema hierarchy, with the stars having makeup, hairdo, secretary, a dresser, a car, a trailer and no relationship with the crew. As soon as you finish shooting, somebody would come up and say, 'You can have a rest.' And I said, 'Fuck 'em, I'm not coming here to have a rest, I'm coming here to work.' Then, suddenly, I discovered freedom.

"There was no makeup man, there was a hand camera working in the streets, and no way of hearing somebody tell you 'Go and have a rest, and we'll call you when it's ready.' So from that time on, I've been related to everything. Even the production; I knew how much it cost, I knew where the money went, and it was total freedom. And it was telling stories in another way. It didn't last long, because hierarchy came back again."

As her leading-lady days began to wane, Moreau made a graceful transition to character parts, lending her talents to such enterprising and unusual films as Duras' "Nathalie Granger," Bertrand Blier's neglected anarchist romp "Going Places" and Fassbinder's softcore extravaganza "Querelle," slutting around in ridiculous whorehouse garb, belting out "Every Man Kills the Thing He Loves."

Her cameos are always great unexplored tangents. Watch her in Luc Besson's fine but overpraised "Le Femme Nikita." It is an extended cameo with one glorious scene -- teaching Anne Parillaud to apply makeup -- the kind of moment directors would sell their mothers for, but one that opens a hole in the pacing and depth of the film, offering a glimpse of how a fine thriller might also have been a brilliant character study.

Moreau occupies the full color spectrum. Still, I always think of her in black and white, her face an unparalleled wash of elusive middle-gray tones, a cigarette, defying physics, hanging just off her lower lip, coils of smoke rising up into the darkness where emulsion and reality stop. An image to counterblast the most dire surgeon general's warning.

It's a dirty habit, yes, but some people are exempt. Moreau's cigarette is as much a part of her image as Monroe's blond locks were a part of hers. I don't mind an icon's secondhand smoke. Oh, sure, it kills you just as fast, but it kills you with a certain je ne sais quoi. Legends can do all sorts of things that would only make the rest of us look foolish.

Before I leave her apartment, Moreau and I look at an old press still from Vadim's "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." It's a great shot of her. While holding it she smiles, just a little bit.

"When you see something like that, you have no sense of nostalgia?" I ask.

"What for? My life is very exciting now. Nostalgia for what? No. It's like climbing a staircase. I'm on the top of the staircase, I look behind me and I see the steps. That's where I was. You and I, we're here right now. Tomorrow, we'll be someplace else. So why nostalgia?"

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