French actress Christine Boisson, who got her big screen break as a 17-year-old in Emmanuelle, has died at the age of 68 in Paris.
Boisson had just left school and was still a minor when Just Jaeckin cast her in his 1974 erotic classic as the sexually adventurous teenager Marie-Ange who introduces Emmanuelle (Sylvia Kristel), to the shady libertine figure of Mario.
After a being cast in a handful of smaller roles purely on the basis of her physique, Boisson decided to go back to school and studied acting at France’s prestigious Conservatoire.
On completing the three-year course, she refused to take on roles where the principal consideration for the casting was her physique.
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Over the course of her 40-year career, Boisson ratcheted up more than 50 film credits including Michelangelo Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman (1984), Daniel Schmid’s Jenatsch (1987), Jacques Bral’s Exterior, Night, Yves Boisset’s Radio Rave (1989), Olivier Assayas’ A New Life (1993), Peter Kassovitz’s Bonjour Tristesse (1995), Maîwenn’s All About Actresses (2009) and Eric Valette’s State Affairs (2009).
At the same time, Boisson also built up a body of theatre work appearing in productions of works by Shakespeare, Harold Pinter, Tennessee Williams and d’Eugène Ionesco among others.
In 2010, her personal life hit the headlines after it was reported that she had attempted to commit suicide by jumping from her fifth floor apartment, but had been prevented from doing so by firefighters.
Boisson later said in an interview with celebrity magazine Gala that she had threatened to commit suicide during an argument with her partner of the time but had never intended to kill herself for real. She said it was a trick she had learned from her abusive mother and that she was not proud of what had happened.
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