Irène Tunc

Biography

Irène Tunc (Lille, 1934 - Versailles, 1972) was a French actress who came to film through beauty pageants. Crowned Miss France in 1954, she built a career that moved between Italian productions, French comedies and author-driven titles linked to the Nouvelle Vague.

Her early years on screen were spent largely in Italy and France, in light comedies and melodramas such as Camilla (1954) and Sacha Guitry's Paris Was Ours (1956). She was married to Belgian director Ivan Govar from 1958 to 1964 and later to filmmaker Alain Cavalier, who made the documentary Irène (2009) in her memory. In the 1960s her work brought her closer to auteurs such as Jean-Pierre Melville, Alain Resnais, Claude Lelouch and François Truffaut. Away from the screen, she was one of the 343 women who publicly declared in 1971 that they had had an abortion. She died in 1972, aged 37, from injuries sustained in a road accident.

Key films

• Léon Morin, Priest (1961), directed by Jean-Pierre Melville; part of the wave of author-driven French titles of the period.
• Live for Life (1967), directed by Claude Lelouch; one of her most recognisable films from her 1960s French career.
• The Ruthless Four (1967), directed by Robert Enrico; a commercially successful adventure drama of its time.
• Je t'aime, je t'aime (1968), directed by Alain Resnais; one of the director's most unusual works on memory and time.
• The Two English Girls (1971), directed by François Truffaut; one of her last major releases, shot shortly before her death.