Her best known songs are "Paris Canaille" (1962, originally sung by Léo Ferré), "La Javanaise" (1963, written by Serge Gainsbourg for Gréco) and "Déshabillez-moi" (1967).

As an actress, Gréco played roles in films by French directors such as Jean Cocteau and Jean-Pierre Melville.

She did not receive love from her mother in her childhood and suffered from her harsh comments due to being an unwanted child, such as "You ain't my daughter.

The two sisters decided to move back to Paris but were captured and tortured by the Gestapo, then imprisoned in Fresnes Prison in September 1943.

She made her debut in the play Victor ou les Enfants au pouvoir in November 1946 and began to host a radio show dedicated to poetry.

[6] Her friend Jean-Paul Sartre installed her at the Hotel La Louisiane and commented that Greco had "millions of poems in her voice".

[7] She was known to many of the writers and artists working in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, such as Albert Camus, Jacques Prévert and Boris Vian, thus gaining the nickname la Muse de l'existentialisme.

[8] Gréco spent the post-Liberation years frequenting the Saint-Germain-des-Prés cafes, immersing herself in political and philosophical bohemian culture.

A leftist, she supported François Mitterrand in the 1974 presidential election,[23] and was an initial investor in Minute, when it was mainly non-political and focused on the entertainment world.

Jean-Paul Sartre based the singer in his trilogy The Roads to Freedom (Les chemins de la liberté) on Gréco.

[27] An allusion to Gréco is made by English singer Ray Davies in the song "Art School Babe" from his album Storyteller.

Paul McCartney said of the song: "We'd tag along to these parties, and it was at the time of people like Juliette Greco, the French bohemian thing.

"[28] John Lennon wrote in Skywriting by Word of Mouth: "I'd always had a fantasy about a woman who would be a beautiful, intelligent, dark-haired, high-cheek-boned, free-spirited artist à la Juliette Gréco.