Died French actress with Ukrainian roots, “Fantômas girl” Mylène Demongeot

She died in Mayenne at the age of 88.

In the ancient city of Mayenne in northwestern France, actress Mylene Demongeot, a sex symbol of the 60s, a favorite of millions of Soviet viewers, died. She was 87 years old. She played the journalist Helen in the famous trilogy about Fantômas, and Milady in The Three Musketeers. She was loved for dozens of other paintings, including “Hello, sadness!” and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

In 2015, at the Russian Film Festival in Honfleur, Mylene Demongeot was a member of the jury. And it got everyone’s attention. The flow of French fans did not dry out to her. And she took pictures with everyone, signed autographs. She was 80 then. She looked like an alien in a golden fairy coat. And only sneakers reminded us of the reality in which we are.

Milen then grieved that both our countries, France and Russia, were going through troubled times, and believed in better days. “I’m sure we’ll win,” she said. “Art always wins.”

In 1964, Demongeot came to Moscow with Jean Marais. And in 2008, she presented the film Under the Roofs of Paris at the Moscow International Film Festival, shot by the talented Kurdish director Hineroma Salem. In recent years, she starred not so often, but she did not remain without roles. Pictures with her participation were constantly released in France, although most often these were very small episodes.

And in the 1960s, Mylene was a real sex symbol. Few of us knew that her mother Claudia Trubnikova was born in Kharkov. Demongeot spoke in Honfleur that Ukrainian blood flows in her. “I feel in myself a strange mixture of vulnerability and rigidity. Perhaps this can explain my love for images of dangerous and complex women. I played Milady in The Three Musketeers. Everyone knows her insidious character, ”said the actress.

Demongeot has written several books. The most popular of them is called “Lilac from Kharkov” and is dedicated to the mother of the actress, who belonged to the “white wave” of emigration. Milen talked about this book during her visit to the MIFF. Then the translator made a mistake and the lilacs turned into lilies. In the Russian press, the title of the book “Lilies from Kharkov” was distributed. Mylene in Honfleur said that her mother was forced to leave for Khabarovsk, from where she moved to China.

In Shanghai, she met the future father of the actress, who has Italian roots. Mylene described her own marriage in her other book, Secret Boxes. Her husband was Marc Simenon, director and son of the popular writer and master of the detective genre Georges Simenon. Mark Simenon died at the age of 60 in 1999.