Andréa Parisy

Biography: life and films

Andréa Parisy may not have had the most prolific of screen careers (she appeared in only 24 films between 1953 and 1999) but she made her impact during her all too brief period of stardom in the early 1960s. Her original name was Andrée Marcelle Henriette Parisy and she was born in Levallois-Perret, France on 4th December 1935. The stunning brunette with Audrey Hepburn eyes made her screen debut in walk-on parts in Ralph Habib's Les Compagnes de la nuit (1953) and Yves Ciampi's L'Esclave (1953). Her first break came when she was cast as the daughter of Raymond Souplex and Jane Sourza in the early Louis de Funès comedy Bébés à gogo (1956). It was in Marcel Carné's Les Tricheurs (1958) that Parisy secured her place in French film history, as a liberated young woman having to deal with an unintended pregnancy.

Parisy then played the ambiguous female lead alongside Lino Ventura in Gilles Grangier's crime drama 125, rue Montmartre (1959), before partnering Edmond O'Brien and Richard Basehart in Yves Allégret's L'Ambitieuse (1959). In Jean Delannoy's murder mystery, Le Rendez-vous (1961) she was suitably cast as a photographer's model and likely murder suspect. She had a small part in Jacqueline Audry's spirited comedy Les Petits matins (1962) and caused trouble for lorry driver Jean-Paul Belmondo as the femme fatale in Henri Verneuil's Cent mille dollars au soleil (1964). In the 1965 comedy anthology Les Bons vivants, she gave great value in the role of an upwardly mobile prostitute. It is for the role of the feisty resistance nun Sister Marie-Odile in Gerard Oury's La Grande vadrouille (1966) that Parisy is now most fondly remembered.

After this Andréa Parisy appeared with comedy giant Louis de Funès one more time, in Le Petit baigneur (1968). That same year, she appeared as Princess Stephanie in Terence Young's lavish period piece Mayerling. Then she had the unenviable job of coming between Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin in Pierre Grimblat's Slogan (1969). After this, her career in decline, she only appeared in minor roles in three other films, finally taking her cinema bow in Benoît Jacquot's Pas de scandale (1999). Her last screen appearance was in the television series Navarro (2001). After a long illness, Andréa Parisy died in Paris on 27th April 2014, aged 78. She is now buried in Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Filmography