Jean Seberg

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Birth name Jean Dorothy Seberg
Nationality USA
Birth 13 november 1938 at Marshalltown (USA)
Death 30 august 1979 (at 40 years) at Paris (France)

Jean Dorothy Seberg (November 13, 1938 – August 30, 1979) was an American actress. She starred in 34 films in Hollywood and in Europe, including Saint Joan, "Bonjour Tristesse", Breathless, Lilith, Moment to Moment, A Fine Madness, Paint Your Wagon, Airport, Macho Callahan, and Gang War in Naples.

Seberg is also one of the best-known targets of the FBI COINTELPRO project. Her victimization was rendered as a well-documented retaliation for her support of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s.

Jean Seberg died at the age of 40 of a barbiturate overdose in Paris. Her death was ruled a suicide.

Biography

On September 5, 1958, Seberg married François Moreuil, a French lawyer, age 23, in Marshalltown after having met in France 15 months earlier. They divorced in 1960. Moreuil had ambitions in movies and directed his estranged wife in "La récréation". According to Seberg, the marriage was a "violent" one; and she complained that she "got married for all the wrong reasons." On living in France for a period of time, Seberg said in an interview:

I'm enjoying it to the fullest extent. I've been tremendously lucky to have gone through this experience at an age where I can still learn. That doesn't mean that I will stay here. I'm in Paris because my work has been here. I'm not an expatriate. I will go where the work is. The French life has its drawbacks. One of them is the formality. The system seems to be based on saving the maximum of yourself for those nearest you. Perhaps that is better than the other extreme in Hollywood, where people give so much of themselves in public life that they have nothing left over for their families. Still, it is hard for an American to get used to. Often I will get excited over a luncheon table only to have the hostess say discreetly that coffee will be served in the other room. [..] I miss that casualness and friendliness of Americans, the kind that makes people smile. I also miss blue jeans, milk shakes, thick steaks and supermarkets.
However, despite extended stays in the United States, Seberg remained Paris-based for the rest of her life. In 1963, she married French aviator, resistant, novelist and diplomat Romain Gary, who was 24 years her senior and was previously married. Gary's divorce from his first wife took place on September 5, 1962, shortly before their wedding October the 6th. The marriage in Corsica was secret and used accommodations with the law. Their only child together, Alexandre Diego Gary, was born in Barcelona on July 24, 1962; for this, Diego's birth and first years of life were hidden from even Gary's closest friends and relatives. Thanks to his contacts in the diplomat services, Gary "established" Diego's birth at the French village of Charquemont on October 26, 1963, after his parents' marriage. During her marriage to Gary, Seberg lived in Paris, Greece, Southern France and Majorca. Diego married and as of 2009 resides in Spain where he runs a bookstore and oversees his father's literary and real estate holdings.

Seberg's second child, Nina Hart Gary (born August 23, 1970 - died August 25, 1970, buried at Riverside Cemetery in Marshalltown, Iowa) was acknowledged by Gary as his own, but the child was actually the product of an affair with a student revolutionary named Carlos Ornelas Navarro.

In 1972, she was married for the third time, to aspiring film director Dennis Berry.

In 1979, while separated from her legally-wed husband, Seberg went through "a form of marriage" to an Algerian named Ahmed Hasni. Hasni persuaded her to sell her second apartment on the Rue du Bac, and he kept the proceeds (reportedly 11 million francs in cash), announcing that he would use the money to open a Barcelona restaurant. The couple departed for Spain but she was soon back in Paris alone, and went into hiding from Hasni, who she said had grievously abused her.