Arielle Dombasle

Arielle Dombasle
Born	Arielle Laure Maxime Sonnery Connecticut
Occupation	Actress, singer
Years active	1978–present
Spouse(s)	Philippe Albou (1976-1985) Bernard-Henri Lévy (1993–present)
Official website

Arielle Dombasle (born Arielle Laure Maxime Sonnery de Fromental on April 27, 1953 in Hartford, Connecticut¹ or April 27, 1958 in Norwich, Connecticut²) is a French-American singer, actress, director and model. Her breakthrough roles were in Éric Rohmer's Pauline at the Beach (1983) and Alain Robbe-Grillet's The Blue Villa (1995). She became known to American audiences through her appearances on Miami Vice and the 1984 miniseries Lace.

Childhood

The daughter of Françion Garreau-Dombasle and Jean-Louis Melchior Sonnery de Fromental, a silk manufacturer, Dombasle and her brother, Gilbert, were raised in Mexico by their maternal grandparents after their mother died in 1964. Her maternal grandfather, Maurice Garreau-Dombasle, was a close friend of and advisor to Charles de Gaulle and served as the French ambassador to Mexico. Her maternal grandmother was Man'Ha Dombasle (née Germaine Massenet, 1898-1999, a writer and poet who translated Rabindranath Tagore's works into French and was a longtime friend of the science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, who dedicated to her his 1972 novel The Halloween Tree.

Dombasle family's surname was created in 1912, when Dombasle's grandfather René Sonnery (1887—1925), an industrialist from Lyon, married Anne-Marie Berthon du Fromental. She took Dombasle as her professional surname in honor of her mother.

She was raised in Mexico and also at Château de Chaintré, the Sonnery family's estate near Saumur, Maine et Loire.

Career

Claude Lelouch and Arielle Dombasle

Dombasle embarked on a singing career and acting after attending the Conservatoire international de musique de Paris³ and further studies in Mexico.⁴

She has appeared in several Hollywood English-language productions, but most of her acting work has been in French, as are her albums. She also has directed and written the scripts for two films, Les Pyramides Bleues and Chassé-croisé. Renowned for her beauty, she has described her looks as "a Crazy Horse dancing girl",⁵ a reference to the famous cabaret in Paris.

Private life

Formerly married to Dr. Paul Albou whom Vanity Fair magazine described as a "Jewish playboy society dentist 32 years her senior,"⁴ she has been, since 19 June 1993, the third wife of French philosopher and writer Bernard-Henri Lévy. They were married at Saint-Paul-de-Vence on the Côte d'Azur where they have a villa. She has two stepchildren, Antonin-Balthazar Lévy and Justine Lévy, a novelist. Her brother, Gilbert Sonnery (aka Gilbert Sonnery Garreau), is a textile executive, having been chairman of J. B. Martin Ltée and vice chairman of the French holding company MRM.

Filmography

Discography

• Cantate 78 (1978) single
• Je te salue mari (1980) single
• Nada más (1988) single
• Amour symphonique (1990) single
• Liberta (2000) single and album
• Odysseus (2000) single
• Extase (2002) album
• Amor Amor (2004) album
• Arielle en concert (2005) DVD
• C'est si bon (2006) album
• Où Tu Veux (2007) single
• Glamour à mort (2009) album
• Extra-terrestre (2009) single

References

1. ^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0231319/
2. ^ http://www.allocine.fr/personne/fichepersonne_gen_cpersonne=915.html
3. ^ A Woman at Home in Many Worlds - May 24, 2006 - The New York Sun
4. ^ ^{a b} Bernard Henri-Levy: France's Prophet Provocateur: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com
5. ^ http://www.pariscabaret.fr/fr/paris/Cabarets/CRAZY-HORSE/63/CRAZY-HORSE_revue-de-presse.html

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Arielle Dombasle

• Official web site
• Arielle Dombasle at the Internet Movie Database
• Arielle Dombasle at Allmovie

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia