MARITAL STATUS
Profession Actress
Birth name Odette Michelle Suzanne Agramon
French nationality
Birth March 27, 1929 (Céret, Pyrénées-Orientales – France)
BIOGRAPHY
Born in 1929 to a mother from Cannes and a Catalan father, Claire Maurier gave free rein to her desires for the stage by entering the Bordeaux Conservatory at the age of 16, a period during which she already had established actors like Alice Cocea as partners , Jacques Dumesnil , or even Alain Cuny . After a promising start, the young actress decided to leave for the capital where she became a student of René Simon . She then took her first steps on the Parisian stage in Lysistrata alongside Raymond Hermantier . Claire Maurier then performed in theater plays in France and Belgium before turning to television where she appeared for the first time in the successful series The Last Five Minutes .
She then played small roles in the cinema ( The Holidays End Tomorrow in 1950, La Belle de Cadix in 1953…) before really breaking through in Le Dos au mur by Edouard Molinaro in 1957. He again offered her a role in 1959 in A Girl for Summer and in 1965 in When the Pheasants Pass alongside Michel Serrault . Thus began a rich and busy career where the actress starred in popular French films. She was notably chosen in 1959 to play the fickle mother of Jean-Pierre Léaud in Les Quatre cent coups by François Truffaut . Subsequently, she appeared in Douce violence by Max Pécas in 1961, in La Cuisine au verre in 1963 where she played the bigamist Provençal wife of Bourvil and Fernandel or even in Merveilleuse Angélique by Bernard Borderie in 1965.
Abandoned for a time by the cinema, the actress plays numerous roles in TV films and TV series. After a few appearances (from Nelly Kaplan for The Pirate’s Bride (1969) to Jean-Marie Poiré for Les Petits Cuddles (1978)), Claire Maurier made a notable return to the big screen in 1978 under the direction of her favorite filmmaker Edouard Molinaro , in one of the greatest comic successes of French cinema: La Cage aux Folles . Two years later, she played the role of Madeleine, an attractive but aging woman in Un Mauvais fils by Claude Sautetwhich earned her a César nomination as Best Actress in a Supporting Role in 1981.
Claire Maurier devoted herself more to television than to cinema but continued to make notable appearances on the big screen, in 1996 notably in a role of surly mother for Un Air de famille by Cédric Klapisch , based on the play by Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri , or even in a Parisian bistro in Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (2000). Her career remains more intense in the theater and especially on television since in 2005, she was Maryse Berthelot, one of the protagonists of the television series Make yourself at home . If we continue to see her regularly on the big screen (with Catherine Corsini in Les Ambitieux or with Marc Fitoussi in La Vie d’artiste ), her presence in the cinema is especially evident in 2010 with La Tête en friche by Jean Becker , where she plays alongside Gérard Depardieu .
