Anna Karina: an actor of easy charm and grace whose presence radiated from the screen | Peter Bradshaw
From her landmark early films with Jean-Luc Godard to later work such as The Nun, Karina’s beauty and charisma shone out
It was Anna Karina’s fate, or curse, to be perpetually described as an “icon” or a “muse”: a devastatingly beautiful figurehead and inspiration-figure to all those male directors doing the creating or critics doing the rhapsodising – one male director-cineaste in particular. She certainly was every bit as beautiful as everyone ceaselessly said, but it was her easy charm, intelligence and grace which made that beauty visible and made it exist. It was the kind of acting talent that made her whole style and address to the camera look easy, or not like acting: the kind of thing that bad or inexperienced actors – or very good male stars – foreground as an effortfully meaningful performance. And she had parallel careers as singer, producer, director and novelist.
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