Françoise Rosay, born Françoise Bandy de Nalèche, was a renowned French opera singer, diseuse, and actress who enjoyed a remarkable film career spanning over sixty years, becoming a legendary figure in French cinema.
Born on April 19, 1891, in Paris, Rosay was the illegitimate daughter of Marie-Thérèse Chauvin, an actress known as Sylviac. She initially planned to become an opera singer and, in 1917, won a prize at the Paris Conservatoire, making her debut at the Palais Garnier in the title role of Salammbô by Ernest Reyer.
Rosay's first recorded film was Falstaff in 1911, and she began working in Hollywood from 1929 onwards. In 1917, she married director Jacques Feyder, with whom she remained until his death in 1948, having three sons. She appeared in several films under her husband's direction, including Le Grand Jeu, Pension Mimosas, La Kermesse héroïque, and Les Gens du voyage.
During World War II, Rosay spent time in England and Switzerland, teaching acting classes at the Conservatoire de Genève, while still appearing in films, such as Halfway House, in which she played a refugee French wife of a British sea captain.
Throughout her career, Rosay worked with numerous notable French stars, including Jean Gabin, Michèle Morgan, Raimu, Jeanne Moreau, Danielle Darrieux, Micheline Presle, Paul Meurisse, Gérard Philipe, Louis Jouvet, Michel Simon, Simone Signoret, Fernandel, and Jean-Louis Barrault. In Hollywood, she co-starred with Charles Boyer, Maurice Chevalier, and Buster Keaton, working with directors such as William Dieterle, Martin Ritt, Ronald Neame, and Peter Glenville.
In England, she appeared in The Alien Corn, a segment of the W. Somerset Maugham anthology film Quartet. Additionally, she played the role of a famous piano virtuoso who gives a critical appraisal of aspiring pianist Dirk Bogarde's likelihood of becoming a great musician in the film Schubert's Impromptu in E flat.
Rosay's biological father, Count François Louis Bandy de Nalèche, acknowledged her as his daughter in 1938. Her final appearance on film was in the Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-winning film Der Fußgänger, directed by Maximilian Schell, in 1974.
Rosay died on March 28, 1974, in Montgeron, Île-de-France, near Paris. She is buried with her husband, Jacques Feyder, in Sorel-Moussel, Île-de-France.
