Micheline Presle, the rebel, celebrates her 100th birthday

Grace has no age. Micheline Preslé, who recently swapped the paths of the Luxembourg Gardens, where she liked to stroll, for the beautiful wooded park of the national artists’ house in Nogent-sur-Marne, is celebrating her hundredth birthday today. All day she will have fun because her admirers, her friends from the cinema and her family will come to visit her. For the one who continues to marvel at everything, the conversation is sure to be lighthearted. “Carpe diem, that could be my motto”, she said with her disarming smile. She thinks it’s her forward-looking philosophy of life that made her the doyenne of French cinema: “You know, the past doesn’t interest me, except maybe when it comes to talking about cinema. You remember Blanchette Brunoy in The Baron of the lock. What an actress! That, I will never forget.”

The cinema, yes, is the great affair of the existence of Micheline Chassagne, born on August 22, 1922 in Paris. She will adopt the name of Presle…