born Jan. 26, 1928, Paris, France
died Feb. 11, 2000, Paris
French film director.
After working briefly as a stage actor in the mid-1940s, he began his film career as an assistant on Juliette (1953). He directed and cowrote the highly successful erotic film And God Created Woman (1956), which established his wife, Brigitte Bardot , as a sex symbol. He duplicated this winning formula with two later wives, Annette Stroyberg in Dangerous Liaisons (1959) and Jane Fonda in Barbarella (1968), and his lover, Catherine Deneuve , in Vice and Virtue (1962).