(1965), with additional prominent roles in La Notte (1961), Jules et Jim (1962), and Le journal d'une femme de chambre (1964).

[4][5] Moreau's father was French; her mother was English, a native of Oldham, Lancashire, England[2] and of part Irish descent.

[5] When Jeanne was a young girl, "the family moved south to Vichy, spending vacations at the paternal ancestral village of Mazirat, a town of 30 houses in a valley in the Allier.

Moreau ultimately lost interest in school and, at age 16, after attending a performance of Jean Anouilh's Antigone, found her calling as an actor.

Her parents separated permanently while Moreau was at the conservatory and her mother, "after 24 difficult years in France, returned to England with Jeanne's[8] sister, Michelle.

[5] François Truffaut's New Wave film Jules et Jim (1962), her biggest success internationally, is centered on her magnetic starring role.

[5] She also worked with a number of other notable directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni (La notte and Beyond the Clouds), Orson Welles (The Trial, Chimes at Midnight and The Immortal Story), Luis Buñuel (Diary of a Chambermaid), Elia Kazan (The Last Tycoon), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Querelle), Wim Wenders (Until the End of the World), Carl Foreman (Champion and The Victors), and Manoel de Oliveira (Gebo et l'Ombre).

[13] She also had relationships with directors Louis Malle and François Truffaut, fashion designer Pierre Cardin,[14] and the Greek actor/playboy Theodoros Roubanis.

In 2009, Moreau signed a petition in support of director Roman Polanski, who had been detained while traveling to a film festival in relation to his 1977 sexual abuse charges, which the petition argued would undermine the tradition of film festivals as a place for works to be shown "freely and safely", and that arresting filmmakers traveling to neutral countries could open the door "for actions of which no-one can know the effects".