Delphine Seyrig (April 10, 1932 - October 15, 1990) was a stage and film actress and a film director.
Born as Delphine Claire Beltiane Seyrig in Beirut, Lebanon, she was the daughter of an archeologist Henry Seyrig and Hermine de Saussure, the sister of the composer Francis Seyrig. She grew up in Lebanon and her family relocated to New York City when she was 10 years old. Later her parents returned to Lebanon and sent her to school in France. As a young woman, she studied acting at the Comédie de Saint-Étienne, training under Jean Dasté, and at the Centre Dramatique de l'Est. She appeared briefly in small roles in the TV Series Sherlock Holmes.
In 1956 she returned to New York City and studied at the Actors Studio, in 1958, she appeared in her first film, Pull My Daisy. In New York she met director Alain Resnais who asked her to star in his film, L'Année dernière à Marienbad. Her performance brought her international recognition and she moved to Paris.. One of her most famous appearances is the older married woman Fabienne Tabard between the couple Jean-Pierre Léaud and Claude Jade in Truffaut's Stolen Kisses.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Delphine Seyrig worked with some of the best directors in the film industry including François Truffaut, Luis Buñuel, Marguerite Duras, and Alain Resnais. She became one of Europe's most respected actors both on stage and in film, and was named best actress at the Venice Film Festival for her role in 1963's Muriel. Her range was such that she played many diverse roles, and because she was fluent in French, English and German, she appeared in films in all three languages, including a number of Hollywood productions.
Through the years, Seyrig used her celebrity status to promote women's rights. Of the three films she directed, her most important was the 1977 production Sois belle et tais-toi (Look Beautiful and Keep Your Mouth Shut) that included actresses Shirley MacLaine, Maria Schneider and Jane Fonda, amongst others, speaking frankly about the level of sexism they had to deal with in the film industry.
In 1982 Seyrig was a key member of the group that established the Paris-based "Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir", which maintains a large archive of women's filmed and recorded work and produces work by and about women. In 1989, Seyrig was given a festival tribute at the Créteil International Women's Film Festival, France.
She was married to, and later divorced from, the American painter Jack Youngerman (b. 1926), who had studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Delphine Seyrig died in Paris in 1990, aged 58, apparently from lung cancer (although some sources simply state "lung disease"), and was interred there in the Cimetière du Montparnasse.
