| Jacqueline Bisset |
Bisset on the red carpet at the 1989 Academy Awards |
| Born |
Winnifred Jacqueline Fraser-Bisset
September 13, 1944 (1944-09-13) (age 64)
Weybridge, Surrey, England |
Jacqueline Bisset (born Winnifred Jacqueline Fraser-Bisset; September 13, 1944) is an English actress.
Biography
Early life
Bisset was born in Weybridge, Surrey, England, the daughter of Arlette Alexander Bisset, a homemaker and lawyer, and Max Fraser, a general practitioner.[1] Her father was Scottish and her mother was of French and English descent;[2][3] Bisset's mother cycled from Paris and boarded a British troop transport to escape the Germans during World War II.[4] Bisset has a brother, Max. Her mother taught her to speak French fluently and she was educated at the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle in London. When Bisset was a teenager, her mother was diagnosed with disseminating sclerosis. Bisset's parents divorced in 1968, after 28 years of marriage.[4] Bisset moved in to help her mother. She had taken ballet lessons as a child and now began taking acting lessons and fashion modeling to pay for them.
Career
In 1967, Bisset was cast in the movie Two for the Road. Next, she participated in the James Bond satire, Casino Royale (1967), as Miss Goodthighs. In 1968, Mia Farrow dropped out of the movie The Detective (1968), and the role went to Bisset. That same year, she was cast opposite Steve McQueen in Bullitt, and appeared in the 1970 disaster film Airport.
In 1973, she appeared in François Truffaut's Day for Night, where she earned the respect of European critics and moviegoers as a serious actress. She is the main character in Luigi Comencini's La donna della domenica in 1975. In 1977, Bisset made strides towards becoming a better-known entertainer in America with her movie The Deep (1977), co-starring Robert Shaw, where swimming underwater wearing only a T-shirt helped make the film a box office success, leading the producer Jon Peters to say, "That T-shirt made me a rich man,"[5] and led many to credit her with popularizing the wet T-shirt contest. At the time, Newsweek declared her "the most beautiful film actress of all time." About that time, a small Dutch-producedcitation needed film Bisset had made some years earlier was re-released in the United States under the title Secrets. That movie featured the only extensive nude scenes of Bisset's career and the producers cashed in on her fame.
Jaqueline Bisset at the premiere of Bette Midler's movie The Rose, 1979
By 1978, she was a household name. She earned her first Golden Globe nomination for the comedy Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? Soon thereafter, she played in the movies Rich and Famous (1981) with Candice Bergen, and Under the Volcano with Albert Finney (1984), for which she earned her a second Golden Globe nomination. In 1996, she was nominated for a César Award, for her role in La Cérémonie. Bisset has worked with directors such as François Truffaut, John Huston, George Cukor, and Roman Polanski. Several of her movies are French or Italian productions.
Bisset has appeared in made-for-TV movies, especially during the past 10 years. One of her later TV movies, in 2003, was America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story, in which she portrayed Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Bisset's most recent television work was a recurring role as the mysterious James, during the fourth season of the FX series Nip/Tuck.
Personal life
Though she has been linked with many actors, Bisset never married. Bisset is godmother to actress Angelina Jolie. She appeared with Jolie in the film Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005); however, the scenes never made the final cut.
Unlike many actresses of her generation who have difficulty finding work after 40, Bisset made a seamless transition from leading lady to character actor. She remains in demand in Hollywood and Europe. She told a Bermuda newspaper in 2004:[6]
"This film business, perhaps more so in America than in Europe, has always been about young sexuality. It's not true of theatre, but in America, film audiences are young and they go to the cinema to see the sort of romance or adventure that appeals to them. It's not an intellectual cinema in America. But one mustn't be too greedy. One wants to be stimulated by the work as long as there is something to give. I think you have to be as flexible as possible. Perhaps you don't get handed the big American productions, but, quite honestly, who would want to be in a lot of them? Many of them are just puerile teenage filler, and they're not fascinating to be in. To be used in a part without depth is a frustrating feeling, when you know you have something to give, and the camera just sort of brushes past you, and doesn't get what you have to give. Most actresses I know are frustrated, but you have to adapt to the reality. I go and find a small part in something I find interesting, or find an independent film".
Bisset divides her time between homes in England and Beverly Hills, California.
Bisset in popular culture
In the NBC TV show Cheers, the episode "Bar Bet" has Sam Malone faced with a bet made with an old drinking buddy a long time ago. The bet: he would marry Jacqueline Bisset by a certain date or lose his bar. Rather than losing the bet because he'd never marry the Jacqueline Bisset, or welching on the bet and having to admit under oath that he was drunk when he made the bet, he found an American with the same name and brought her back to Boston.
Bisset is mentioned in the Al Stewart song "Clifton in the Rain."
In Garry Shandling's TV show "It's Garry Shandling Show," a married friend confides that he keeps his sex life alive by thinking of his wife Jackie as Bisset. (She, in turn, thinks of him as Pete Rose.)
In Shandling's HBO TV show The Larry Sanders Show, producer Artie says he once dated Bisset.
Bisset also co-starred in the 1976 film, End of the Game, featuring John Voight and Robert Shaw. She is not related to American actress Josie Bissett.
Filmography
References
External links
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