1938-
1979. As an
Iowa teenager, with little or no acting experience, she
was discovered by
Otto Preminger and cast in
the lead of his
Saint Joan; the
film flopped, and her career was over, it was thought. But she ended up, after doing Preminger's
Bonjour Tristesse, somehow gaining a co-starring role (with Jean-Paul Belmondo) in
Jean-Luc Godard's
A bout de souffle (
Breathless), becoming a star in the process. She became
the short haired icon, a few years before the advents of
Twiggy and
Mia Farrow.
Most of her work was done in Europe, including a part in The Mouse that
Roared, Peter Sellers' tour-de-force, but most of her films were French;
her then-husband, Romain Gary was a writer and director, and she had starring roles in his two films. Her brief Hollywood years include roles in the great Paint Your Wagon and in A Fine Madness. She never really recaptured the sort of buzz that Breathless produced.
In the States, Seberg became politically active, even, at one time, working for
The Black Panthers, which made her, for a while, a target for the FBI, which wasn't necessarily a good thing for her already-frazzled personality; when her daughter died in infancy, the Bureau let float a rumor that the child was fathered by a Panther. She died, a few years later, in Paris, of an overdose of barbituates. It wasn't her first attempt at suicide - it is said that she tried to kill herself once a year, on the anniversary of her daughter's death.