Anna Karina - New Wave Legend Dies at 79

Anna Karina, the French New Wave starlet who rose to instant fame in international and other French films directed by Jean-Luc Godard has died at the age of 79.

Karina died Saturday at 2.38pm in Paris from cancer, her agent Laurent Balandras told The Hollywood Reporter. Her husband Dennis Berry was by her side.

She and Godard were married from 1961-64, and she served as his muse in such memorable works as A Woman Is a Woman (1961) — for which she received a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival — Vivre sa vie (1962), Band of Outsiders (1964), Pierrot le Fou (1965) and Alphaville (1965).

The actress' productive career was not limited to the movies of Godard, however. She accumulated more than 50 feature credits, working with other major auteurs like Jacques Rivette, Luchino Visconti, Chris Marker, Volker Schlöndorff and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. 

In 2017, Karina was crowned Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Speaking with Filmmaker magazine a year earlier, she reflected on what it was like to work with Godard, who was 10 years her senior, in the heyday of the French New Wave. 

"Things have changed," she said. "But at the time, if you were a woman, you didn't really have a voice. If you were a woman it was just, 'Be beautiful and shut up.' "

May her soul rest in peace.