Early life

Karina's mother was a dress shop owner and her father was a ship's captain who left the family a year after she was born. She lived with her maternal grandparents for three years, until she was four. She spent the next four years in foster care when she returned to live with her mother. She has described her childhood as "terribly wanting to be loved", and as a child made numerous attempts to run away from home.

She began her career in Denmark, where she sang in cabarets and worked as a model playing in commercials. At age 14, she appeared in a Danish short film by Ib Schmedes, which won a prize at Cannes. She studied dance and painting in Denmark and for a while made a living selling her paintings. In 1958, after a row with her mother, she hitchhiked to Paris.

Career

Modeling and meeting with Godard

Karina was 17 when she arrived in Paris—poor and unable to speak French. Living on the streets, she got a break while sitting at the cafe Les Deux Magots. She was approached by a woman from an advertisement agency who asked her to do some photos. She became a successful fashion model, meeting Pierre Cardin and Coco Chanel. Chanel helped her devise her professional name, Anna Karina.

Karina performed, uncredited, in a 1959 soap advertisement that was included near the end of Guy Debord's On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time. The image was accompanied by Debord's voice-over: "The advertisements during intermissions are the truest reflection of an intermission from life."

Jean-Luc Godard, then a film critic for Cahiers du cinéma, first saw Karina in a series of Palmolive ads in a bathtub covered in soapsuds. He was casting his debut feature film, Breathless. He offered her a small part in the film, but she refused when he mentioned that there would be a nude scene. When Godard queried her refusal, referring to the supposed nudity in the Palmolive ads, she is said to have replied "Are you mad? I was wearing a bathing suit in those ads—the soapsuds went up to my neck. It was in your mind that I was undressed."

In the end, the character Godard reserved for Karina did not appear in the film. The next year, however, Godard offered her a role in Le Petit Soldat (1960). Karina, who was still under 21, had to persuade her estranged mother to sign the contract for her.

Film

Karina won the Best Actress Award at the Berlin Film Festival in 1961 for her interpretation of the character Angela in the film A Woman Is a Woman. She also appeared in Godard's Bande à part (1964). Her acting career was not, however, limited to Godard's films, and she went on to a successful collaboration with other well-known directors. Her role in The Nun (1966), directed by Jacques Rivette, is considered by some to be her best performance. She also acted in Luchino Visconti's The Stranger.

Other notable films include: George Cukor's Justine (1969), Tony Richardson's Laughter in the Dark (1969), Christian de Chalonge's L'Alliance (1970), Andre Delvaux's Rendezvous a Bray (1971), The Salzburg Connection (1972), Franco Brusati's Bread and Chocolate (1973) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Chinese Roulette (1976). In 1972, she set up a production company named Raska for her film-directing debut Vivre Ensemble, in which she also acted and which was released in 1973. She wrote and acted in Last Song in 1987. She has since appeared in Haut, Bas, Fragile (1995) by Jacques Rivette and sang in The Truth About Charlie.

Theatre

Karina has also appeared on stage, in Rivette's adaptation of La Religieuse, Pour Lucrece, Toi et Tes Nuages, Françoise Sagan's Il Fait Beau Jour et Nuit and Ingmar Bergman's Efter repetitionen.

Singing career

Karina has also maintained an important singing career. At the end of the 1960s, she scored a major hit with "Sous le soleil exactement" and "Roller Girl" by Serge Gainsbourg. Both songs are taken from the TV musical comedy Anna (1967), by the film director Pierre Koralnik, in which she sings seven songs alongside Gainsbourg and Jean-Claude Brialy. She subsequently recorded an album, Une histoire d'amour, with Philippe Katerine, which was followed up by a concert tour. Karina has also made several appearances on television. In 2005, she released Chansons de films, a collection of songs sung in movies.

Karina wrote, directed and starred in Victoria, a musical road movie filmed in Montreal, Quebec and Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean in 2007. A review by Richard Kuipers in Variety praised it as "a pleasant gambol through the backwoods of Quebec...Given plenty of room to work off each other, the members of this fine ensemble keep pic on track...Big plus is the music and heartfelt songs by Philippe Katerine."

Books

Karina has written four novels: Vivre ensemble (1973), Golden City (1983), On n'achète pas le soleil (1988), and Jusqu'au bout du hasard (1998).

Personal life

Karina and Godard married on 3 March 1961, during the shooting of A Woman Is a Woman, and divorced in 1965. Their relationship is said to have been rocky for most of its course, with Karina left emotionally unstimulated by Godard's obsession with work. By 1967, they were barely on speaking terms. After Godard, she was married to scriptwriter-actor Pierre Fabre (1968-1973), actor-director Daniel Duval (1978-1981) and director Dennis Berry (1982-present).

In popular culture

The Seattle-based hip-hop group Blue Scholars released a song titled "Anna Karina" on their Cinemetropolis album in 2011.

Selected filmography

Year	Title	Role	Director
1960	Little Soldier, TheThe Little Soldier	Veronica Dreyer	Jean-Luc Godard
	Woman Is a Woman, AA Woman Is a Woman	Angela Récamier	Jean-Luc Godard
	Tonight or Never	Valérie	Michel Deville
1961	Cléo from 5 to 7 (episode "Les fiancés du pont Macdonald")	The Fiancée	Agnès Varda
	Sun in Your Eyes	Dagmar	Jacques Bourdon
	She'll Have to Go	Toni	Robert Asher
1962	My Life to Live	Nana	Jean-Luc Godard
	Three Fables of Love (episode "Le corbeau et le renard")	Colombe	Hervé Bromberger
	Shéhérazade	Shéhérazade	Pierre Gaspard-Huit
1963	Sweet and Sour	Ginette	Jacques Baratier
	Un mari à un prix fixe	Béatrice Reinhoff	Claude de Givray
1964	Circle of Love	Rose / The Chambermaid	Roger Vadim
	Band of Outsiders	Odile	Jean-Luc Godard
	All About Loving	Hélène	Jean Aurel
	Thief of Tibidabo, TheThe Thief of Tibidabo	Maria	Maurice Ronet
	Camp Followers, TheThe Camp Followers	Elenitza	Valerio Zurlini
1965	Pierrot le fou	Marianne Renoir	Jean-Luc Godard
	Alphaville	Natascha von Braun	Jean-Luc Godard
1966	Nun, TheThe Nun	Suzanne Simonin	Jacques Rivette
	Made in U.S.A.	Paula Nelson	Jean-Luc Godard
	Oldest Profession, TheThe Oldest Profession (episode "Anticipation")	Natasha / Eleanor Romeovich, Hostess 703	Jean-Luc Godard
1967	Stranger, TheThe Stranger	Marie Cardona	Luchino Visconti
	Anna	Anna	Pierre Koralnik
	Zärtliche Haie	Elena / Costa	Michel Deville
	Lamiel	Lamiel	Jean Aurel
1968	Magus, TheThe Magus	Anne	Guy Green
	Before Winter Comes	Maria	J. Lee Thompson
	Man on Horseback	Elisabeth Kohlhaas	Volker Schlöndorff
1969	Justine	Melissa	George Cukor and Joseph Strick
	Laughter in the Dark	Margot	Tony Richardson
	Time to Die, TheThe Time to Die	The Young Girl	André Farwagi
1970	Wedding Ring, TheThe Wedding Ring	Jeanne	Christian de Chalonge
1971	Rendezvous at Bray	She (The Waitress)	André Delvaux
	Carlos	Clara	Hans W. Geißendörfer
1972	Salzburg Connection, TheThe Salzburg Connection	Anna Bryant	Lee H. Katzin
	Vivre ensemble	Julie Anderson	Anna Karina
1973	Morel's Invention	Faustine	Emidio Greco
	Bread and Chocolate	Elena	Franco Brusati
1975	Scrambled Eggs	Clara Dutilleul	Joël Santoni
1976	Musician Killer, TheThe Musician Killer	Louise	Benoît Jacquot
	Chinese Roulette	Irene Cartis	Rainer Werner Fassbinder
1978	Surprise Sock	Nathalie	Jean-François Davy
	Just like Home	Anna	Márta Mészáros
1979	Story of a Mother, TheThe Story of a Mother	Christine Olsen	Claus Weeke
1984	Ave Maria	Berthe Granjeux	Jacques Richard
1985	Treasure Island	The Mother	Raoul Ruiz
1987	Abyss, TheThe Abyss	Catherine	André Delvaux
1994	Up, Down, Fragile	Sarah	Jacques Rivette
2002	Truth About Charlie, TheThe Truth About Charlie	Karina	Jonathan Demme
2008	Victoria	Victoria	Anna Karina

[ Source: Wikipedia ]