Valérie Quennessen

Valérie Quennessen (3 December 1957 – 19 March 1989) was a French theatre and film actress.[1][2]

Valérie Quennessen
Born(1957-12-03)3 December 1957
Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France
Died19 March 1989(1989-03-19) (aged 31)
Saint-Ouen-des-Champs, Eure, Haute-Normandie, France
Resting placeCimetière du Montparnasse
Years active1976–1989
SpouseFrancois Manceaux
Children2

Biography

Quennessen was born near Paris in Boulogne-Billancourt, of Jewish French/Polish parentage, and dedicated much of her childhood to pursuing her dream of becoming an acrobat. She quickly reached a level of competence and received an award for her expertise at the age of ten. By her teens, she had given up acrobatics and enrolled in acting classes, not because she particularly wanted to get into show business, but to help her overcome social anxiety. She found that she not only overcame her shyness via acting, but she also enjoyed performing. She studied drama first briefly at the École nationale supérieure des arts et techniques du théâtre, then at the Conservatoire National d'Art Dramatique, in Paris, from 1976 to 1979, and appeared in several theater productions, notably Chers Zoiseaux, by Jean Anouilh, which premiered in 1976, and Pirandello's Nuova colonia (1977).

She made her first film appearances in a pair of 1976 French films: Le Petit Marcel and Le Plein de super. She continued to appear in the occasional French film and television show, and in 1979 she landed one of the main roles in the American film French Postcards (Willard Huyck), working alongside Miles Chapin, Debra Winger and Mandy Patinkin. She followed up that film by playing Princess Yasimina in John Milius's 1982 film Conan the Barbarian with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the title role.

Randal Kleiser's Summer Lovers was the peak of her career for American audiences. This story of a love triangle on the Greek island of Santorini also starred Peter Gallagher and Daryl Hannah. During the filming of the movie, in which she played Lina, an archaeologist, Valérie is said to have discovered several pieces of pottery at the Akrotiri site that were more than 3,500 years old.[3]

Shortly after Summer Lovers, Valérie Quennessen appeared in the short We Cannes, filmed during the 1982 film festival by François Manceaux, then gradually retired from acting, choosing to concentrate on raising her family. She and Francois Manceaux had two children, Antoine (1982) and Elsa (1985), both of them born in France. On March 19, 1989, she died in a car accident on the A13 highway in Saint-Ouen-des-Champs at the age of 31.[1]

Her family members

Her husband Francois Manceaux, who had a supporting role in Summer Lovers, is a director and writer who has worked in several TV movies and documentaries.[4] Antoine, the oldest of her children, is a movie shorts producer and editor [5] while the youngest, Elsa, is a well known plastic artist living in Mexico City since 2012. Elsa moved to Amsterdam in 2009 to study at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, and then in 2015 and 2016, after moving to Mexico, she attended a postgraduate program at SOMA. She has shown her work in art galleries around the world on several occasions.[6][7]

Filmography

Theatre

References
  1. "Profil de ... Valérie Quennessen" (in French). Conservatoire National d'Art Dramatique. Archived from the original on 17 November 2011. Retrieved 21 January 2020.
  2. "Valérie Quennessen". Kinorium. Retrieved 2022-08-23.
  3. "35 years later, "Summer Lovers" shines more for music than romance". Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved 2022-08-23.
  4. "François Manceaux". IMDb. Retrieved 2022-08-23.
  5. "Antoine Manceaux". IMDb. Retrieved 2022-08-23.
  6. "Elsa Louise Manceaux". casawabi. Retrieved 2022-08-23.
  7. "Elsa-Louise Manceaux presenta "Las épocas caleidoscópicas" en el Cabañas". El Informador :: Noticias de Jalisco, México, Deportes & Entretenimiento (in Mexican Spanish). 7 February 2022. Retrieved 2022-08-23.
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