Anouk was born Anne-Marie Levain in Paris. Her father was a cartoonist, Paul (or Pol) Ferjac, who worked for the satirical weekly publication Le Canard enchaîné (which translates in English to 'the chained newspaper'). As a child, Anouk learned to dance and eventually took acting and diction classes under René Simon . At fourteen, she performed a snake act at the Casino de Paris and made her film debut that same year. She had her first leading role a year later in a comedy drama about struggling artists, Cité de l'espérance (1948). Anouk featured in support in André Cayatte 's Schwurgericht (1950) and Wir sind alle Mörder (1952), but was then little heard of until the 1960s when she enjoyed something of a resurgence in films of the Nouvelle Vague under directors Michel Deville (Lucky Jo (1964)), Alain Resnais (Der Krieg ist vorbei (1966) and Ich liebe dich, ich liebe dich (1968)) and Claude Chabrol (Claude Chabrol´s Das Biest muss sterben (1969)). From the mid-80s, she worked predominantly in French television.
