Bernadette Lafont

If you spent any time watching French New Wave cinema, you have inevitably seen Bernadette Lafont. Starting out as the saucy muse of François Truffaut in his short film "Les Mistons", she quickly became the quintessential anti-starlet of the Nouvelle Vague, gracing classics by Claude Chabrol and starring in Jean Eustache's epic marathon of bohemian angst, "The Mother and the Whore".

She spent her career playing vibrant, unconventional, often rebellious women who defied bourgeois respectability. Naturally, an artistic life spent running around Paris in the company of intellectuals, avant-garde directors, and eccentric artists—including painters like her friend Léonor Fini—might lead an eager cataloguer of cinema history to wonder if there was any Jewish heritage fueling all that countercultural charisma.

Alas, no. Lafont hailed from Nîmes, deep in the south of France, born into a resolutely French Protestant (Huguenot) family. Her father was a pharmacist, her roots were firmly planted in the Cévennes mountains, and her connection to Judaism was roughly equivalent to that of a baguette.

So while French cinema fans will forever kvell over her smoky voice and iconic performances, she simply belongs to another covenant. Or, in this case, a strictly French Protestant one.