Jean Dorothy Seberg (; ; November 13, 1938August 30, 1979) was an American actress. She is considered an icon of the French New Wave as a result of her performance in Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 film Breathless.
Seberg appeared in 34 films in the United States and Europe, including Saint Joan, Bonjour Tristesse, Lilith, The Mouse That Roared, Breathless, Moment to Moment, A Fine Madness, Paint Your Wagon, Airport, Macho Callahan, and Gang War in Naples. Seberg was among the best-known targets of the FBI's COINTELPRO project. Her targeting was in retaliation for her support of the Black Panther Party and was directly ordered by J. Edgar Hoover.
Seberg died at the age of 40 in Paris, and the French police ruled her death a probable suicide. Seberg's second ex-husband, Romain Gary, called a press conference shortly after her body was found, at which he blamed the FBI's campaign against Seberg for her demise. Gary mentioned how the FBI had planted false rumors in the media that Seberg's pregnancy by Carlos Navarra in 1970 was by a Black Panther, and how the trauma had resulted in her losing the baby. Gary stated that Seberg had attempted suicide on numerous anniversaries of the infant's death, August 25. At the time of her death, Seberg was separatedthough not divorcedfrom third husband Dennis Berry.
Early life
Seberg was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, the daughter of Dorothy Arline (née Benson), a substitute teacher, and Edward Waldemar Seberg, a pharmacist. Her family was Lutheran and of Swedish, English, and German ancestry. Seberg had a sister, Mary-Ann, and two brothers, Kurt and David, the younger of whom was killed in a car accident at the age of 18 in 1968.
Her paternal grandfather, Edward Carlson, arrived in the U.S. in 1882 and observed, "There are too many Carlsons in the New World." He changed the family surname to Seberg in memory of the water and mountains of Sweden.
In Marshalltown, Seberg babysat Mary Supinger, some eight years her junior, who became the stage and film actress Mary Beth Hurt. After she graduated from Marshalltown High School, Seberg enrolled at the University of Iowa to study dramatic arts but took up filmmaking instead.
Film career
Seberg made her film debut in the title role of Joan of Arc in Saint Joan (1957), based on the George Bernard Shaw play, having been chosen from among 18,000 hopefuls by director Otto Preminger in a $150,000 talent search. Her name was entered by a neighbor.
When she was cast on October 21, 1956, Seberg's only acting experience had been a single season of summer stock performances. The film generated a great deal of publicity, but Seberg commented that she was "embarrassed by all the attention." On the failure, she later told the press:<blockquote>I am the greatest example of a very real fact, that all the publicity in the world will not make you a movie star if you are not also an actress.</blockquote>
Preminger promised her a second chance,
Seberg renegotiated her contract with Preminger and signed a long-term contract with Columbia Pictures. Preminger had an option to use her on another film, but they never again worked together. Her first Columbia film was the successful comedy The Mouse That Roared (1959), starring Peter Sellers.
Mylène Demongeot recalled in a 2015 filmed interview in Paris: "Otto had high hopes in Jean and Saint Joan<nowiki/>'s failure took a toll on him also because there was a 5-films-contract from what I recall. She was extremely sad too about it and when we all arrived on the set of Bonjour Tristesse she carried on her shoulders the weight of guilt, she was scared. And with that type of man, of character [Preminger] she shouldn't have shown fear, that's why I got along with him. I was a supporting role, I didn't have the weight of the expected success of the film on my shoulders. I had no apprehension regarding him. When he screamed, I would turn and tell him [sarcastically] "you know, you shouldn't screech like that, you gonna get yourself a stroke". Such words would defuse him. On the contrary, Jean was scared of him so he would take advantage and eventually became very mean to her."
Breathless and French career
During the filming of Bonjour Tristesse, Seberg met François Moreuil, the man who was to become her first husband, and she then based herself in France, finally achieving success as the free-love heroine of French New Wave films. Despite her achievements, Seberg did not identify with her characters or the film plots, saying that she was "making films in France about people [I'm] not really interested in." In New York City, she acted in the comedy A Fine Madness (1966) with Sean Connery and under the direction of Irvin Kershner.
thumb|200px|Seberg in 1969
In 1966 and 1967, Seberg played the leading roles in two French films directed by Claude Chabrol and co-starring Maurice Ronet. In February and March 1966, she starred in Line of Demarcation, filmed around Dole, Jura, and in May and June 1967, she played the lead role in the French-Italian Eurospy film The Road to Corinth, shot in Greece.
After making the crime drama Pendulum with George Peppard (1969), Seberg appeared in her only musical film, Paint Your Wagon (also 1969), based on Lerner and Loewe's stage musical and co-starring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood. Her singing voice was dubbed by Anita Gordon. Seberg also starred in the ensemble disaster film Airport (1970), which drew mixed reviews but was a huge success at the box office.
Later career
Seberg acted in the western Macho Callahan (1970) and the violent crime drama Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! (1971), but both films were failures. In 1972, she appeared in Gang War in Naples, which was successful in Europe but not in the United States.
thumb|left|upright=1|Seberg in [[Gang War in Naples (1972)]]
Seberg was François Truffaut's first choice for the central role of Julie in Day for Night (La Nuit américaine, 1973), but after several fruitless attempts to contact her, he gave up and cast British actress Jacqueline Bisset instead.
Seberg's last American film appearance was in the TV movie Mousey (1974). She remained active during the 1970s in European films, appearing in White Horses of Summer (Bianchi cavalli d'Agosto) (1975), The Big Delirium (Le Grand Délire, 1975, with husband Dennis Berry) and Die Wildente (1976, based on Ibsen's The Wild Duck).
At the time of Seberg's death, she was working on the French film Operation Leopard (La Légion saute sur Kolwezi, 1980), which was based upon the book by Pierre Sergent. She had filmed scenes in French Guiana and returned to Paris for additional work in September. After her death, the scenes were reshot with actress Mimsy Farmer.
FBI COINTELPRO operation
thumb|FBI inter-office memo: "... cause her embarrassment and cheapen her image"
thumb|FBI inter-office memo: "Usual precautions to avoid identification of the Bureau"
During the late 1960s, Seberg provided financial support to groups supporting civil rights, such as the NAACP as well as Native American school groups such as the Meskwaki Bucks at the Tama County settlement near her hometown of Marshalltown, for whom she purchased $500 worth of basketball uniforms.
As part of its extended campaign to smear and discredit black liberation and anti-war groups, which began in 1968, the FBI became aware of several gifts Seberg had made to the Black Panther Party, totaling an estimated $10,500 in contributions; these were noted among a list of other celebrities in FBI internal documents later declassified and released to the public under FOIA requests. The FBI's strategy and modalities can be found in its interoffice memos.
In 1970, the FBI created a false story from a San Francisco-based informant that the child Seberg was carrying was not fathered by her ex-husband Romain Gary, as initially claimed, but by Raymond Hewitt, a member of the Black Panther Party. The story was reported by gossip columnist Joyce Haber of the Los Angeles Times as a blind item.