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Mylène Demongeot (born Marie-Hélène Demongeot; 29 September 1935 – 1 December 2022) was a French film, television and theatre actress and author[1] with a career spanning seven decades and more than 100 credits in French, Italian, English and Japanese[2] speaking productions.[3][4]
Demongeot was born in September 1935 in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes,[25] the daughter and only child of Alfred Jean Demongeot, a high-ranking civil servant, born on 30 January 1897 in Nice (himself the son of Commandant Marie Joseph Marcel Demongeot and Clotilde Faussonne di Clavesana, an Italian aristocrat) and Claudia Troubnikova, born on 17 May 1904 in Kharkiv (Ukraine, Russian Empire). Her parents, both actors themselves, had met in Shanghai, China,[26] where her half-brother, Léonid Ivantov, from the first marriage of her mother, was born, in Harbin on 17 December 1923.[27]
Like hundreds of other major European figures of stage and screen, she trained at the Cours Simon in Paris where her classmates included Jean-Pierre Cassel, Claude Berri and Guy Bedos.[28] She was a classically trained pianist and her first ambition was of becoming a professional.[29]
Demongeot was the victim of a financial scam set up by her account manager who stole €2 million from her, money which was used to make loans to numerous high-profile personalities, like Isabelle Adjani, Alexandre Arcady or Samy Naceri.[33] Justice took hold of the case in June 2012 and two banks were found guilty.[34] She recounts these years of proceedings in her book Très chers escrocs… (2019, English: Very Dear Crooks…).[35]
Among the quotes on or from her colleagues, are found:
Brigitte Bardot wrote in one of her books: "Mylène was my little cinema sister, then became my combat sister, a libra like me, she has always loved animals, even going so far as to save a baby lion from set that she brought back to the hotel which hosted her during the filming".[39]
Arthur Miller wrote: "Mylene Demongeot was [in The Crucible] truly beautiful, and so bursting with real sexuality as to become a generalized force whose effects on the community transcended herself."[40]
Demongeot met Gary Cooper at the opening of the first escalator to be installed in a cinema, at the Rex Theatre in Paris, on 7 June 1957. She declared in a filmed interview: "Gary Cooper was sublime, there I have to say, now he, was part of the stars, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, those great Americans who I've met really were unbelievable guys, there aren't any like them anymore."[41]
On David Niven she said in a filmed interview: "He was like a lord, he was part of those great actors who were extraordinary like Dirk Bogarde, individuals with lots of class, elegance and humour. I only saw David get angry once. Preminger had discharged him for the day but eventually asked to get him. I said, sir, you had discharged him, he left for Deauville to gamble at the casino. So we rented a helicopter so they immediately went and grabbed him. Two hours later, he was back, full of rage. There I saw David lose his British phlegm, his politeness and class. It was royal. [Laughs]."[41]
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