Biography
Marie Cardinal was a French novelist and occasional actress. Born in Algiers in French Algeria, she studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and taught in Salonica, Lisbon, Vienna and Montreal before publishing her first novel, Écoutez la mer, in 1962.
She appeared in Jean-Luc Godard's Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle (1967) and played Mouchette's mother in Robert Bresson's Mouchette (1967). Her best-known works include the best-selling novels La Clé sur la porte (1972) and Les Mots pour le dire (1975), the latter of which was the first of her books published in the United States.
