Biografia
French actress Anne Vernon, born Edith Antoinette Alexandrine Vignaud in Saint-Denis, France, in January 1924, remains relatively unknown outside Europe. After graduating from the Paris École des Beaux-Arts, she began working as a model and apprenticed with an advertising designer. Developing a passion for acting, she toured with a French theatre troupe before starting her film career. From 1948, she landed glamorous leading roles, especially in light post-war romantic comedies and farces, where she charmingly portrayed ingénues in both English-language films (Warning to Wantons, 1949) and French-language films (Edward and Caroline, 1951). Skilled in dramatic roles as well, she appeared in just one Hollywood movie, playing the secondary female lead in the film noir Shakedown (1950) alongside Howard Duff and Peggy Dow.
Viewers may recognize her from British films such as Terror on a Train (1953), where she played Glenn Ford’s bomb-defusing wife, and the light comedy The Love Lottery (1954), featuring a love triangle with David Niven and Peggy Cummins. Mostly, however, Anne remained active in French and Italian cinema, starring opposite notable actors like Daniel Gélin, Vittorio Gassman, and Jean Marais. By the 1960s, she transitioned into elegant, maternal roles, most notably as Catherine Deneuve’s cautious, concerned mother in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). Unexpectedly, she also appeared in the controversial soft-core lesbian film Therese and Isabelle (1968). After some television work in the early 1970s, she gradually retired from acting.
