It could well have been in Italy, where she spent her childhood, that Edwige Feuillère’s talent for acting was born. Feuillère had an impressive emotional range and her real passion was the theatre. “A major role in the theatre is a crisis, a film is a puzzle. But whether it’s on the boards or on the big screen, a major role scars you for life,” said the actress who played roles by Alexandre Dumas, Balzac, Jean Giraudoux, Paul Claudel, Tennessee Williams and Patrice Chéreau. As Abel Gance’s Lucrèce Borgia in 1935, Archduchess Sophie in Max Ophül’s De Mayerling à Sarajevo in 1940, and Jacques de Baroncelli’s Duchess of Langeais in 1942, she brought hope and passion to the French throughout the occupation. She glided into the very heart of French theatre and her dark eyes pierced the screen with an elegance that left its mark on the entire post-war generation. For Jean Cocteau, Edwige Feuillère was “perfection incarnate” in L'Aigle à deux têtes (The Eagle with Two Heads) (1947), and he pronounced her “the queen of snow, of blood, of pleasure and of death”. Jean Marais, her young anarchist lover in the film, went on to become her most loyal friend. Fifty-one years later, they left this Earth together, in November 1998.