PARIS: French actress Emmanuelle Riva, star of 1959 classic "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and more recently the oldest best actress Oscar nominee in a late-career revival, died Friday from cancer. She was 89.
Riva died in Paris "after a long illness," her agent, Anne Alvares Correa, told AFP. But Riva "was active until the end," Correa added.
Riva, whose 60-year acting career spanned film, TV, and theatre, was nominated at 86 for a best leading actress Academy Award for "Amour", which won the best foreign film Oscar in 2013.
"Emmanuelle Riva had a deep impact on French cinema, whether it be with 'Hiroshima mon Amour' ... to invoke a wounded memory or, with 'Amour' ... to invoke the end of life," said French President Francois Hollande.
"She created intense emotion in all of the roles she embodied," Hollande added.
Riva was born on February 24, 1927 in rural France and made her way to Paris at 19 to the dismay of her working-class family.
She took acting lessons, obtaining a scholarship, and began her career on the stage.
That's where famed French New Wave pioneer Alain Resnais spotted her, and he quickly cast her in her first leading feature role in "Hiroshima mon Amour".
The role endeared her to French cinema fans and propelled her into iconic status in her homeland. The film is the story of a brief affair between a French actor and a Japanese architect in post-war Hiroshima.
"Her voice brought the screenplay by Marguerite Duras to life," Gilles Jacob, the former Cannes Film Festival president, told AFP. "She turned it into a unique thing, like something like a religious cantata."
Riva, with her arresting brunette beauty and distinct voice, went on to work with a slew of celebrated European directors, including Jean-Pierre Melville, Georges Franju and Andre Cayatte.
In more recent years she had been relegated to playing mothers and grandmothers when Austrian director Michael Haneke approached her for "Amour" and rebooted her career.
Despite her cancer, Riva performed at the Villa Medici in Rome last autumn and completed filming on two films, one due out this March and another yet to be released. -- AFP