Renée Cosima(1922-1981)

Renée Cosima, just another pretty face of the French screen? Yes and no. She was indeed charming, but she also had a talent for mixing innocence with guile, wickedness, revolt, mystery in films like 'Les enfants terribles', 'Au royaume des cieux', 'Les naufrageurs' ... Endowed with such qualities she could have become a great name but, for some reason, her career went nowhere. A former pupil of the Opéra de Paris Ballet, young Renée was forced to give up her dancing career on account of health problems. She was still in her tender years when she married a South American diplomat and followed him abroad for several years. When she was back in 1947, she developed a passion for the theatre. At the same time she was spotted by the cinema and soon landed memorable parts in important pictures by Cocteau, Melville and Duvivier while treading the boards in plays by such 'small fry' as George Bernard Shaw and Federico Garcia Lorca. She even played artist Suzanne Valadon alongside famous painter Maurice Utrillo in a short directed by Pierre Gaspard-Huit. However, from the beginning of the fifties and despite such a brilliant start, things became disappointing. Renée Cosima got fewer roles in more commercial films. She was in fewer plays as well. All this may be due to the fact that, after her divorce, the actress had found a new love interest in the person of Guenaël Bolloré, an influential industrialist. Indeed, after her wedding in 1957, Renée Cosima gradually distanced herself from the limelight. She died too young at the age of 58, leaving but a modest mark on film history.