Catherine Rouvel

At 14, she took dance classes, which she abandoned in favor of theater. She made her debut with plays by Molière. She read Racine and, with Marie-France Boyer, founded the Théâtre Grignan (1956-1957), which became the Théâtre Quotidien de Marseille.^[1][2]

Rouvel had her breakthrough role in 1959 when she starred in the film Picnic on the Grass (Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe), directed by Jean Renoir. Afterwards, while regularly appearing in films, she proved more interested in theatre where she performed works by Marcel Pagnol, Jacques Audiberti and Fyodor Dostoevsky. She also found success on French television where she appeared in the miniseries L'Éducation sentimentale (1971, based on Gustave Flaubert's novel of the same name) and Les Rois maudits (1972, based on Maurice Druon's The Accursed Kings). In 1970 she appeared in the major box-office hit Borsalino, where she played the girlfriend of the gangster portrayed by Alain Delon. She and Delon reprised their roles in the sequel Borsalino & Co. (1974). Rouvel's other notable films include Claude Chabrol's The Breach (1970), Marcel Carné's Les Assassins de l'ordre (1971) and Jean-Jacques Annaud's Black and White in Color (1976).^[3]

From the 1980s, Rouvel focused on television work, appearing in various miniseries and TV movies. From the early 1990s, she returned to the theatres of her native Marseille, where she appeared in a dozen plays while still playing occasional supporting roles on the big screen. She became less active on screen during the 2000s, but kept working on stage.^[3]