Arielle Dombasle (born Arielle Laure Maxime Sonnery
de Fromental on April 27, 1958 in Norwich, Connecticut) is a
French-American singer, actress, director, model, muse, adored by
many artists, Arielle Dombasle is an elusive character. Her life
is like a novel. 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.
Arielle and her brother, Gilbert, were raised in Mexico by their
maternal grandparents after their mother died in 1964. She is the
granddaughter of the French ambassadors in Mexico and daughter of
an industrialist father, who was also an accomplished
archaeologist and serious collector of pre-Colombian art. Arielle
Dombasle grew up surrounded by Aztec, Mayan, and Olmec icons and
serenaded by the most prominent latin artists as Rufino, Tamayo,
Octavio Paz, Julio Costazar, Carlos Fuentes or Tamara de
Lempicka, a country whose strict Catholicism indelibly marked her
forever. 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.
After fifteen years of classical dance training, and having
followed a trilingual secondary education (French, English, and
Spanish) at the Franco-Mexican high school, she left Mexico in
1976 at the age of eighteen to study music and vocal training in
Paris (conservatoire de musique), she started performing in
theater, dance, and cinema.
Dombasle embarked on a singing career and acting
after attending the Conservatoire international de musique de
Paris and further studies in Mexico.
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", a reference to the famous cabaret in Paris.
Eric Rohmer hired her to play and sing in Perceval le Gallois,
where she was the leading lady Blanche Fleur would open a series
of major films with one of the most prestigious French Director,
she would go on to do four other films with him, followed quickly
by others: Roman Polanski, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Raoul Ruiz,
Cédric Kahn, Patrick Mimouni or John Malkovich.
Arielle Dombasle would become increasingly impossible to
categories going from Henry James master pieces or theatre.
Singing and dancing several themes at the Opera Comique after her
debuts making big successful commercial features and tremendous
hits with her singing records.
Arielle debuts in 1978 in Perceval le Gallois by Eric Rohmer.
This master of France’s Nouvelle Vague offered her a role,
written twenty years earlier for Brigitte Bardot, in Pauline à
la Plage, later working with her again in Le Beau Mariage as well
as L’Arbre, le maire et la médiathèque, in 1993. With her
unique blend of candor and sophistication, Arielle Dombasle
became a source of inspiration for the literary, demanding
cinema, ranging from Alain Robbe-Grillet to Peter Handke. She was
also a familiar figure in Raoul Ruiz’s baroque, Chilean
universe, starring in Le Temps retrouvé, Fado, majeur et mineur,
A propos de Nice and Les Ames fortes en 2001.
After a brilliant foray in American television,
playing one of the leading roles in the great 1980s mini-series
Lace, which captured 65 million viewers, and making an appearance
on the very popular Miami Vice, Arielle Dombasle will also
successfully incarnate on television legendary characters like
Sissi, impériatrice rebelle by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe in 2004 and
Milady by Josée Dayan in 2006.
Although long considered an intellectual actress, Arielle
Dombasle appeared in several successful film comedies in the
1990’s, such as Hervé Palud’s Un Indien dans la Ville and,
in 1994, Claude Zidi’s Astérix et Obélix contre César, who
broke the record on French market.
Inquisitive and impassioned, she would be one of France’s first
young actresses to step behind the camera, directing
Chassé-croisé in 1982 and Les Pyramides bleues in 1988 where
she directed Omar Shariff, Pierre Clémenti, Pascal Gregory,
Alexandra Stewart and even Roman Polanski.
Decorated with the Légion d’honneur in 2007 for her lifetime
achievement, Arielle Dombasle has also received several prizes
including the Berlin Festival’s Silver Bear Award for Pauline
à la plage, 1st Prize at the New York Festival for Miroslava
d’Alejandro Pelayo in 1993, nominated for the Caesar Award for
best actress in Cédric Kahn’s L’ennui, and the Cabourg
Festival’s prize for most romantic actress in Raoul Ruiz’s
Les Ames fortes. An outsized personality, she quickly became a
cult figure.
It would be difficult, however, to attempt to
define so multi-faceted and enigmatic artist. Indeed, it is in
the realm of song that she would reveal the true range of her
depth and talent: becoming one of the most popular female singers
in France, four hit albums (Extase, Liberta, Amor, Amor and
C’est si bon), four gold records and a double platinum album,
as well as packed concert halls in France and abroad (L’Olympia
in 2005, Le Théâtre des Champs Elysées in 2006) made her a
solid concert value.
Her most recent album, C’est si bon harkens back to post-war
America and the golden age of Broadway. As was the case for Amor,
Amor, (more than 700 000 copies sold, fering up a Latin jazzy
sound calypsos, rumbas, boleros from the 40 to the 60, recreating
the most enchanting sounds of the era. Her successful September
2006 Broadway appearances at New York’s mythical Supper Club
with the Joe Battaglia New York City Band were followed by a
series of concerts and international appearances including
Canada, Turkey and Greece.
Re-baptized Dolorès Suggar Rose in February 2007
for her triumphant show at the Crazy Horse, the Parisian temple
of the nude, Arielle Dombasle, live and accompanied by the
legendary dancers, will dance and sing in several “tableaux”
of a burning sensuality directed by Molly Molloy (costumes by
Vincent Darré and Thierry Mugler). “Arielle Dombasle at the
Crazy Horse,” the DVD of December 2007, restores for us the
most spectacular moments of the show à guichets fermés.
After playing in Jérôme Savary’s La belle et la toute petite
bête at the Opéra Comique in 2003, she triumphs at the
Théâtre de Paris with him in 2008, during eighty performances
in “Don Quichotte contre l’Ange bleu,” a musical fable that
is unanimously hailed by the critics and in which she plays
Marlene Dietrich.
Her new album Glamour à mort, written and produced by Philippe
Katerine and Gonzalez (Sony-Columbia) has been unanimously
praised by critics. A mystic-pop album, arrangement by Gonzales
and mix by Renaud Letang, is being called the “album of the
year”.
Angel of light or star of the night under the spotlights of
cabarets, she is decidedly the most irresistible of the divas of
modern times.
Formerly married to Dr. Paul Albou whom Vanity Fair magazine described as a "Jewish playboy society dentist 32 years her senior," 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.
Name: Arielle Dombasle
Name at Birth: Arielle Laure Maxime Sonnery de
Fromental
Birth Date/Locale: April 27, 1958 in Norwich,
Connecticut
Web Site: arielle-dombasle.com
Occupation: Singer, Actress, Director,
Model
Genre: Pop
Years Active: 1978–present
Record Label: Columbia Europe (Amore Amore,
Glamour a Mort), Red Int / Red Ink (C'est Si Bon), Trema (Arielle
Dombasle)
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10 used, starting at $7.95
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16 new, starting at $9.00
20 used, starting at $2.70
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Category: (Book)
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2 used, starting at $50.00
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1. C'est Magnifique (3:03)2. C'est Si Bon (2:52)3. Tico Tico (2:13)4. Relax-Ay-Voo (2:5...
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Arielle Dombasle: En Concert (widescreen) - Dvd
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Born in Connecticut, the French actress-singer Arielle Dombasle pays homage to the her ...
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French actress-singer Arielle Dombasle (PAULINE AT THE BEACH) delivers her sultry brand...
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During a summer holiday on the Normandy coast, Pauline observes adults weave love, sex ...
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