Her film work outside France included the Soviet Union, the United States (Alfred Hitchcock's Topaz), Italy, Belgium, Germany and Japan.

She moved to Paris and became a student of Jean-Laurent Cochet at the Edouard VII theater, and began acting in television productions, including a leading role in TV series Les oiseaux rares.

While performing as Frida in Pirandello's Henri IV, in a production by Sacha Pitoëff at the Théâtre Moderne, Jade was discovered by New Wave film director François Truffaut.

He was "completely taken by her beauty, her manners, her kindness, and her joie de vivre",[1] and cast her in the role of Christine Darbon in Stolen Kisses (Baisers volés, 1968).

[4] Some months after Truffaut's Stolen Kisses Claude Jade starred in Alfred Hitchcock's Topaz (1969), as Michèle Picard, a secret agent's anxious daughter, married to a reporter (Michel Subor).

Hitchcock said he chose the two actresses to provide glamor, and later quipped, "Claude Jade is a rather quiet young lady, but I wouldn't guarantee [that] about her behavior in a taxi".

She starred in Hearth Fires (Les feux de la chandeleur, 1972) as Laura, a daughter who wants to reconcile her parents (Annie Girardot, Jean Rochefort) and who falls in love with her mother's best friend (Bernard Fresson).

She starred in such television movies as Mamie Rose, La Mandragore, Monsieur Seul, Fou comme François, Les anneaux de Bicêtre, Ulysse est revenu, and, in her biggest success of that decade, as heroine Veronique d'Hergemont in the 1979 series The Island of Thirty Coffins (L'île aux trente cercueils).

[1] Among her other film roles in the 1980s were the arrested philosophy prof in Schools Falling Apart (Le Bahut va craquer, 1981), the lawyer Valouin in A Captain's Honor (L'honneur d'un capitaine, 1982), the Vicki Baum-heroine Evelyne Droste in Rendezvous in Paris (1982) and the mysterious Alice in René Féret's thriller The Man Who Wasn't There (L'homme qui n'était pas là, 1987).

She also appeared in TV movies, such as the thriller La grotte aux loups (1980); the drama Nous ne l'avons pas assez aimée (1980); Treize (1981); a dual role in Lise et Laura (1982); A Girl in the Sunflowers (1984); the Italian miniseries Voglia di volare (1984); the French-Spanish-Canadian-German miniseries Le grand secret (1989) and in episode L'amie d'enfance of the series Commissaire Moulin.

[4] During the 1990s Jade worked mainly in television, such as the TV series La tête en l'air and Fleur bleue, as guest star in Une femme d'honneur (ep.Mémoire perdue), Inspecteur Moretti (ep.

In 1998, she played a governor's wife, Reine Schmaltz, who saves herself on a lifeboat in the historical movie The Raft of the Medusa (Le Radeau de la Méduse, 1998).

She took roles in plays by Vladimir Volkoff (The Interrogation); Catherine Decours (Regulus 93); Michel Vinaver (Dissident il va sans dire), Alfred de Musset (Lorenzaccio) and others.

Many plays were adapted for TV, such as her performances as Helena in Shakespeares Midsummer Night's Dream; her Sylvie in Marcel Aymés Les oiseaux de lune; her Colomba in Jules Romains's adaptation of Ben Johnson's Volpone; her Clarisse in Jacques Deval's Il y a longtemps que je t'aime; her title role in Jules Supervielle's Shéhérazade; and her Louise de La Vallière in Le château perdu.

Jade won an award in 1970 for "Révelation de la Nuit du cinéma",[8] and in 1975 she received the Prix Orange [fr] at the Cannes Film Festival.

In 2000 she won the New Wave Award at Palm Beach International Film Festival for her "trend-setting role in the world cinema", followed in 2002 by the Prix Reconnaissance des Cinéphiles in Puget-Théniers.