Jacqueline Bisset
Early life and family
Bisset was born Winnifred Jacqueline Fraser-Bisset in Weybridge, Surrey, England, the daughter of Arlette Alexander, a lawyer turned homemaker, and Max Fraser-Bisset, a general practitioner. She was brought up in Tilehurst, Berkshire. Her father was Scottish and her mother was of French and English descent; Bisset's mother cycled from Paris and boarded a British troop transport to escape the Germans during World War II. Bisset has a brother, Max Fraser-Bisset. 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. 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. Bisset's father died aged 71 of a brain tumour in 1982. Her mother died in 1999.
Career
Bisset made her screen debut with a bit part in The Knack ...and How to Get It (1965). Her first speaking role was in the 1966 film Cul de Sac , starring Donald Pleasence and directed by Roman Polanski. In 1967 she was cast in the movie Two for the Road with Audrey Hepburn, and played her first lead role opposite James Brolin in The Cape Town Affair (1967). That same year, she participated in the James Bond satire, Casino Royale , as Miss Goodthighs. In 1968, she replaced Mia Farrow to star opposite Frank Sinatra in The Detective .
Bisset's breakout role was as Steve McQueen's girlfriend in the hit action film Bullitt , also released in 1968. In 1969, she received her first Golden Globe nomination as New Star of the Year for her performance in The Sweet Ride , and played her first sexy "older woman" (at 25) in The First Time . She was one of the many stars in the blockbuster disaster film Airport (1970), a Best Picture nominee in which she acted opposite Dean Martin and Helen Hayes.
Bisset often appeared with her leading men in more than one film. She was cast as Paul Newman's daughter in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), then as his girlfriend in When Time Ran Out (1980). With Albert Finney, she appeared in Two for the Road , Under the Volcano and the ensemble mystery Murder on the Orient Express starring Sean Connery. Bisset's other frequent costars included Mickey Rourke, Anthony Perkins, and Michael York.
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 , co-starring Robert Shaw and Nick Nolte and directed by Peter Yates, who had previously directed her in Bullitt . A scene of her swimming underwater wearing nothing under her T-shirt helped make the film a box office success, leading the producer Peter Guber to say, "That T-shirt made me a rich man,". At the time, Newsweek declared her "the most beautiful film actress of all time." About that time, a small Dutch-produced 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.
By 1978, she was a household name. She earned a 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, Class (1983) (as a woman who seduces her son's best friend) co-starring Rob Lowe, and Under the Volcano (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 such directors as François Truffaut, John Huston, and George Cukor. Several of her movies are French or Italian productions.
Bisset has appeared in many made-for-TV movies and independent films, especially during the last decade. She received an Emmy Award nomination for the 1999 miniseries Joan of Arc . Other notable projects include the Emmy-nominated epics Jesus (1999) and In the Beginning (2000) with Martin Landau. She made guest appearances on the shows Ally McBeal and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit . 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. In 2005, she appeared in the action movie Domino with Keira Knightley. Bisset's most recent television work was a recurring role as the mysterious James, during the fourth season of the FX series Nip/Tuck . She starred in the lead role of Boaz Yakin's Death in Love which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and is about "a Jewish concentration-camp survivor whose willing romance with the camp's Nazi doctor—a man who tortured her fellow prisoners—destroys the lives of her American husband and their two sons 50 years later".
Personal life
Bisset is godmother to actress Angelina Jolie. She appeared with Jolie in the film Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005); however, the scenes never made it to 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:
