Leading French actress and dancer, born Annette Marie Mathilde Gautsch in Constantine, Algeria. Francoise was the daughter of French Artillery General Charles-Lionel-Honoré Arnould (1882-1969), who was stationed in Morocco when she was born. Her family moved to Paris in 1945, where she studied drama under Andrée Bauer-Thérond, and four years later made her motion picture debut. The story goes that the director Willy Rozier saw a photograph of her, was captivated by her face and petite figure and promptly cast her as the female lead in his drama Perrucha, die Tochter der Nacht (1949), often considered his best work. For much of the succeeding decade Francoise enjoyed a pre-Bardot sex symbol status, usually cast as temperamental, brooding or promiscuous heroines or femmes fatale opposite leading popular actors like Jean Gabin, Alain Delon and Charles Boyer. She was directed on five occasions by Henri Verneuil, who, along with Roger Vadim, had a lot to do with establishing her preeminent screen personae. Her best known starring roles were in Verbotene Frucht (1952), Nächte in Lissabon (1955), Jean Renoir's evocative French Can Can (1955) (as Nini, the bakery girl turned dancer), Der Weg ins Verderben (1956), Die Schüler (1959) and Julien Duvivier's Der Teufel und die zehn Gebote (1962). Francoise's first exposure to American audiences was Vadim's Die Mädchen der Rue D'Amour (1953), but some of her other films were banned in the U.S. and in Britain she was tagged as the 'X Girl'. Her career went into decline as Brigitte Bardot rose to prominence. Francoise continued to work as a character actress, primarily in television, well into her eighties.
