Yves Montand ([iv mɔ̃tɑ̃]; born Ivo Livi 13 October 1921 – 9 November
1991) was an Italian-born French actor and singer.

Biography

In 1951, he married Simone Signoret, and they co-starred in several films throughout their careers. The marriage was, by all accounts, fairly harmonious, lasting until her death in 1985, although Montand had a number of well-publicized affairs, notably with Marilyn Monroe, with whom he starred in one of her last films, Let's Make Love.

Montand's only child, Valentin, his son by his second wife, Carole Amiel, was born in 1988. In a paternity suit that rocked France, another woman accused Montand of being the father of her daughter and went to court to obtain a DNA sample from him. Montand refused, but the woman persisted after his death. In a court ruling that made international headlines, the woman won the right to have Montand exhumed and a sample taken. The results indicated that he was probably not the girl's biological father.

Signoret and Montand had a home in Autheuil-Authouillet, Normandy, where the main village street is named after him,

In his later years he maintained a home in St Paul de Vence, Provence until his death from a heart attack. In an interview, Jean-Jacques Beineix said, "[H]e died on the set [of IP5: The Island of Pachyderms]... On the very last day, after his very last shot. It was the very last night and we were doing retakes. He finished what he was doing and then he just died. And the film tells the story of an old man who dies from a heart attack, which is the same thing that happened!" Montand is interred next to his first wife, Simone Signoret, in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

In 2004, Catherine Allegret, the daughter of Montand's first wife Simone Signoret, told in her biography "Un Monde a L'envers" (A World Upside Down), that she had been sexually abused by her stepfather since the age of 5 and that he assaulted her well into adulthood.

Best films