JACQUELINE BISSET Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

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JACQUELINE BISSET

Name: Jaqueline Bisset                                                                   
Birth name: Winifred Jacqueline Fraser-Bisset                                           
Born: 13 September 1944 Weybridge, Surrey, United Kingdom                               
                                                                                         
Jacqueline Bisset (born Winifred Jacqueline Fraser-Bisset on September 13, 1944)         
is a British actress.                                                                   
                                                                                         
Bisset was born in Weybridge, Surrey, England to Max Fraser-Bisset, a Scottish           
General Practitioner, and the former Arlette Alexander, a lawyer of French and           
English descent; Bisset's mother cycled from Paris and boarded a British trooper         
in order to escape the Germans during World War II. Bisset has a brother, Max.           
Bisset's mother taught her to speak French fluently and she was educated at the         
Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle in London. When Bisset was a teenager, her           
mother was diagnosed with disseminating sclerosis. Bisset's parents divorced in         
1968, after 28 years of marriage. Bisset subsequently moved in to help her               
mother. She had taken ballet lessons as a young child, and now began taking             
acting lessons and fashion modeling to pay for them.                                     
                                                                                         
In 1967, Bisset was cast in the critically acclaimed movie Two for the Road.             
Next, she participated in the James Bond satire, Casino Royale (1967), as Miss           
Goodthighs.                                                                             
                                                                                         
In 1968, Mia Farrow dropped out of the movie The Detective (1968), and the role         
went to Bisset. That same year, she was cast opposite Steve McQueen in Bullitt,         
and appeared in the 1970 disaster film Airport.                                         
                                                                                         
In 1973, she appeared in François Truffaut's Day for Night, where she earned the       
respect of European critics and moviegoers as a serious actress. In 1977, Bisset         
made great strides towards becoming a better-known entertainer in America with           
her movie The Deep (1977), co-starring Robert Shaw, where her appearance                 
swimming underwater wearing only a T-shirt helped make the film a box office             
smash, leading the producer Jon Peters to say, "That T-shirt made me a rich man,"       
and led many to credit her with popularizing the wet T-shirt contest. At the             
time, Newsweek magazine declared her to be "the most beautiful film actress of           
all time." About that same time, a small Dutch-produced film she had made some           
years earlier was re-released in the United States under the title Secrets. That         
movie featured the only extensive nude scenes of Bisset's career and the                 
producers were able to cash in on the fame she had later achieved.                       
                                                                                         
By 1978, she was a household name. She earned her first Golden Globe nomination         
for the comedy Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? Soon thereafter, she           
played in the movies Rich and Famous (1981) with Candice Bergen, and Under the           
Volcano with Albert Finney (1984), for which she earned her a second Golden             
Globe award nomination. In 1996, she was nominated for a César Award, France's         
version of the Oscars, for her role in La Cérémonie. During her career, Bisset         
has worked with such well-respected directors as François Truffaut, John Huston,       
George Cukor, and Roman Polanski. Several of her movies are French or Italian           
productions.                                                                             
                                                                                         
Bisset has also appeared in many made-for-TV movies, especially during the past         
ten years, some of which have been quite successful. One of her later TV movies,         
released in 2003, was America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story, in which         
she portrayed Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Bisset's most recent                   
television work was a recurring role as the mysterious James, during the fourth         
season of the FX series Nip/Tuck.