A showbiz icon whose wet t-shirt inspired the lifelong devotion of a generation of male fans was agelessly luminous when she surfaced this week at the age of 81.
She began her Hollywood career in the 1960s and acted in films with such immortal names as Audrey Hepburn, Steve McQueen and Frank Sinatra.
By the 1970s, she had become a reigning sex symbol thanks to an adventure picture that saw her go bra-less while swimming in a white top.
Although she was often slotted in America as a pinup, she achieved a higher-brow career in France, working with venerated legends of the Paris film industry including Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Francois Truffaut.
Her close friendship with French actress Marcheline Bertrand resulted in her being named godmother to the latter’s daughter Angelina Jolie.
During her new sighting in Los Angeles, her figure was still enviably lithe – the product of an ultra-healthy steamed vegetable diet – and her mystique undiminished.
Can you guess who she is?
A showbiz icon whose wet t-shirt inspired the lifelong devotion of a generation of male fans was agelessly luminous when she surfaced this week at the age of 81
During her new sighting in Los Angeles , her figure was still enviably lithe – the product of an ultra-healthy steamed vegetable diet – and her mystique undiminished
At 70, she shed light on her exercise regimen, disclosing that around 3:30pm she would ‘do five or six miles on the treadmill, then get on the rowing machine and finish with some weights’
She is none other than Jacqueline Bisset, whose wet t-shirt became a pop culture landmark in her 1977 scuba-diving adventure film The Deep with Nick Nolte.
The Daily Mail has contacted Bisset’s representative for comment.
Although hordes of men fell into helpless infatuation with her in The Deep, she herself was aghast when she discovered that her bra-less torso was exposed under her white costume in her swimming scenes.
‘I tried to get the thing stopped. I tried to get an injunction on them,’ Bisset shared in an interview she gave a few years ago to the New York Post.
She had already been a movie star for several years and had ‘avoided anything like that’ before The Deep, ‘so it was a bit of a blow,’ she explained.
Bisset’s still willowy frame is the result of a vegetable-heavy diet she adopted after suffering a bout of Epstein-Barr at age 40.
In a 2001 interview about her eating habits, she described her typical grocery haul as spinach, endive, lemons, carrots, green beans, red and green pepper, broccoli, tomatoes, olive oil, mayonnaise and wholegrain bread.
‘I’ll have little bits of meals throughout the day and I’ll grab a few endive leaves from the fridge for a snack,’ Bisset explained, acknowledging that ‘even I found such a healthy diet dull at first but I actually grew to like it,’ per the Guardian.
She shared: ‘I don’t eat much fruit and I don’t really eat a lot of carbohydrates but I get my nutrients from dark green vegetables like broccoli, beans and spinach and I cook them very al dente, not mushy.’
She is none other than Jacqueline Bisset, whose wet t-shirt became a pop culture landmark in her 1977 scuba-diving adventure film The Deep with Nick Nolte
Although hordes of men fell into helpless infatuation with her in The Deep, she herself was aghast when she discovered that her bra-less torso was exposed
She began her Hollywood career in the 1960s and acted in films with such immortal names as Audrey Hepburn, Steve McQueen, Frank Sinatra and Paul Newman; pictured 1968
Her close friendship with French actress Marcheline Bertrand resulted in her being named godmother to the latter’s daughter Angelina Jolie; Bisset pictured with Jolie last year
Bisset’s general practice was to ‘graze’ through the week on steamed vegetables doused in a vinaigrette made with ‘good quality olive oil and lemon,’ while her ‘one weakness’ was a ‘midnight snack’ of mayonnaise spread over wholewheat bread.
‘Occasionally I’ll buy skinned chicken breasts, boil them and break them up into sandwiches and salads, but I can’t bear large pieces of it,’ she said. ‘I also make big vegetables soups because they are perfect for disguising ingredients like kale which is very nutritious but I can’t stand it.’
When she was 68 years old, she shared: ‘Until I was 40, I ate everything. I cooked everything with butter and salt and sauces, and I used to wonder why I felt so queasy in the evening. Now I eat a lot of steamed vegetables, and I love it,’ via The Lady.
‘I’m much more health-conscious than I used to be. A lot of awful things happen to people as they get older, and I believe much of it has to do with the foods we eat and keeping the body clean inside,’ she explained.
At 70, she shed light on her exercise regimen, disclosing that around 3.30pm daily she would ‘do five or six miles on the treadmill, then get on the rowing machine and finish with some weights,’ in an interview with the Times of London.
Raised in Surrey by an English father and a French mother, she modeled in Britain before landing a picture deal with 20th Century Fox and striking out to Los Angeles in the 1960s, leading a bohemian lifestyle by Malibu Beach.
She landed her Hollywood debut with a small role in the 1967 romantic comedy Two for the Road, starring Audrey Hepburn opposite Albert Finney.
By the following year, she was working with Frank Sinatra in the film noir The Detective and – in possibly her most enduringly popular film in America – Steve McQueen in his San Francisco cop thriller Bullitt.
Possibly her most enduringly popular film in America was her pairing with Steve McQueen in his San Francisco cop thriller Bullitt in 1968
Bisset is pictured in 1974 with Michael York in Sidney Lumet’s version of Murder on the Orient Express, which starred Albert Finney as Agatha Christie’s detective Hercule Poirot
In 1973, she broke through in France with two still beloved films, one of which was the the Oscar-winning behind-the-scenes satire Day for Night, directed by Francois Truffaut
One of the highlights of her later career was the 1993 French thriller La ceremonie, in which she starred alongside Isabelle Huppert and which earned her a Cesar nomination
During the early 1970s she acted in projects like Airport, a disaster picture crammed with legacy names like Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin, and The Mephisto Waltz, a horror film that placed her as leading lady to Alan Alda.
In 1973, she broke through in France with two still beloved films, the espionage comedy Le Magnifique, starring New Wave heartthrob Jean-Paul Belmondo, and the Oscar-winning behind-the-scenes satire Day for Night, directed by Francois Truffaut.
Meanwhile, her US career proceeded full-steam ahead in the form of films like the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express, with Albert Finney as Agatha Christie’s detective Hercule Poirot at the head of an ensemble containing Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Richard Widmark, Vanessa Redgrave and John Gielgud.
As the 1970s rolled into the 1980s, she acted with Paul Newman and William Holden in the drama When Time Ran Out and scored a Golden Globe nomination for her turn in the black comedy Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?.
However, the greatest frenzy she ignited during that era was with her wet t-shirt in The Deep, which despite her misgivings catapulted her to stratospheric bombshell status and enabled her to dramatically enhance her fee.
In 1981, she and Candice Bergen led the cast of Rich and Famous, the critically savaged swan song of George Cukor, who directed such Old Hollywood classics as The Philadelphia Story and, in part, Gone with the Wind.
Two years later she starred in the dramedy Class as a woman who has an affair with her son’s (Rob Lowe) best friend (Andrew McCarthy).
One of the highlights of her later career was the 1995 French thriller La ceremonie, in which she starred alongside Isabelle Huppert.
Directed by Claude Chabrol, who was frequently dubbed ‘France’s Hitchcock’ by the English-language press, the film earned Bisset a nomination at the Cesars.
In 1983 she starred in the dramedy Class as a woman who has an affair with her son’s (Rob Lowe) best friend (Andrew McCarthy)
Although Bisset never married, she has enjoyed a full love life sprinkled with celebrities including Nolte, who wrote in his memoirs that they had an affair during The Deep
In 2006 she guested on Ryan Murphy’s hit show Nip/Tuck and in 2014 she played opposite Gerard Depardieu in the Franco-American movie Welcome to New York, a dramatization of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal.
Although Bisset never married or had children, she has enjoyed a full love life sprinkled with celebrities including Nick Nolte, who wrote in his memoirs that they had an affair during The Deep, and the dashing alcoholic Soviet ballet star Alexander Godunov after his defection to the West.
‘Marriage is not something I’ve ever seen anybody do and be happy. I was just trying to be smart,’ she remarked in 1998 to the Standard-Times.
She recalled a man from her past who wanted to marry her and whom she felt would have made a ‘very good husband,’ but whom she avoided exchanging vows with because she ‘felt he’d swallow me whole. I’ve been told I’m quite Oriental in terms of my style as a woman – I allow the man to be a man. I could easily get eaten.’
More recently, she said she had ‘thought about’ marrying certain men ‘and when they wanted to, I haven’t wanted to, and vice versa,’ per the Independent.
‘Sometimes you get too much information when you spend time with people. You start to see things – bad habits. You start to discover them and then you have to marry bad habits and I’m not sure I can cope with them,’ she said.
‘I don’t ever have bad relationships. I haven’t broken up angry. I’ve just moved out of situations that have been overwhelming.’
Bisset is still working in her 80s, with production currently underway on a movie called Shelter Me that covers AI and COVID-19 and will reunite her with Nolte.
Read the full article here
