Simone signoret (1921–1985)—The body political

Abstract

In this article I examine the multifaceted nature of the French actress Simone Signoret, an international star whose film career spanned 40 years (1945–1985). This study investigates the different ways in which her performances and her body-as-performance can be read. It also takes on board the complex intertextuality of this star, who was not just a textual embodiment of the political and historical times in which she lived, but also a woman who was before her times, and as such, was extremely modern. The article argues that for this reason she was a star who disturbed and that her performances, throughout her long career, challenged the perceived notions of femininity and the place of women in society. As such, Signoret offered a new set of possibilities for women to engage with in terms of their identity within the social order of things, possibilities that suggested that identities, including sexual identity and agency, need not be fixed, but are constantly able to be negotiated and rethought.