When Louis Malle's directorial debut L'Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud (Elevator To The Gallows) appeared to make her an overnight sensation in 1958, Jeanne Moreau in fact already had 10 years of film experience and a successful theatre career under her belt. Jean-Louis Barrault directed her at the Comédie Française, and she played opposite Jean Gabin in Jacques Becker's Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (1954).

Aged 24, she starred in a guest performance of Kleist's Prinz Friedrich Von Homburg at Berlin's newly built Schillertheater. A year earlier, in 1951, she was in an adaptation of Molière's The Would-Be Gentleman at the first Berlin International Film Festival. Fifty years have passed since then, but for Moreau time seems to have stood still. She still captivates cinemagoers with her irresistible charm and the unmistakable timbre of her voice, whether in her recent films or those that have long been recognised as classics. So it seems only fitting that the actress, director, screenwriter, producer and singer will be presented with an honorary Golden Bear for her life's work in the festival's jubilee year.

Moreau was both icon and muse of the Nouvelle Vague, working with such diverse directors as François Truffaut, Michelangelo Antonioni, Joseph Losey, Orson Welles, Jacques Demy, Luis Buñuel and Tony Richardson. Les Amants (The Lovers, 1958), her second film with Louis Malle, caused a scandal because it was considered a pamphlet for free love, and her performance was looked upon as erotically provocative. The church was up in arms, and the film was censored in Germany.

A year later there came another uproar. This time, Roger Vadim's adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangéreuses was accused of amoral tendencies. Moreau's distanced, intellectual acting style, her tantalisingly closed mouth with its hint of a mocking smile, her provocatively inward-looking gaze and traces of weariness and disdain in her beautiful face had become her trademarks. The strong and self-confident women she plays rarely find a male to match their uncompromising nature ­ that's what makes her films so extraordinary. Her characters have dignity and grace, are decisive after seeming initially lost and vulnerable, and, most of all, are determined to avoid hypocrisy at all costs. Moreau's acting aspires to the greatest authenticity ­ or, as her friend, author and director Marguerite Duras puts it, Jeanne Moreau embodies on screen and off a "passion for life."

This quality found its most perfect expression in Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte (1960), a story about the the loss of love. "If I should want to die right now, it's only because I no longer love you. That's why I'm so in despair," Moreau says with great disillusionment and without any trace of emotion to Marcello Mastroianni.

It was François Truffaut who brought a new facet of Jeanne Moreau's acting to the fore for Jules et Jim (Jules And Jim, 1961). Lightness and gaiety dominate her portrayal of Catherine, a woman determined to be happy, espousing highly individual, Biblical and yet surprisingly modern notions of "pure love" within a ménage à trois. For the two friends, Jules and Jim, she is the embodiment of femininity, "belonging to everyone, but to no one man alone." In a key scene, she sings the Bassiak melody Le Tourbillon, a song about life's ups and downs which became part of Moreau's repertoire as a singer.

Her portrayal of the doomed woman in Truffaut's La Mariée Était En Noir (The Bride Wore Black, 1967) was yet another display of the full range of her talent. As Julie Kohler, she finally speaks aloud the words that have long been merely understood: "My thoughts are none of your business." This is a key statement from an actress for whom distance is a form of respect and for whom "what counts is being honoured and respected.

In Joseph Losey's stylised black and white film, Eva (1962), Moreau plays a high-class callgirl who uses her allure to sexually enslave a writer. Losey directed Moreau as an elegant femme fatale who delights in the man's degradation and displays her heartfelt contempt and relish of cruelty with the coldness of an unapproachable goddess. Three years later, Moreau is a village schoolteacher who falls victim to her own libido in Tony Richardson's Mademoiselle, based on Jean Genet's script. In another Genet adaptation, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1982 film Querelle ­ Ein Pakt Mit Dem Teufel, Moreau plays the aging madam Lysiane, an enigmatic character who insouciantly sings Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves.

On several occasions, Moreau collaborated with legendary actor-director Orson Welles, playing Fräulein Bürstner in the Kafka adaptation Le Procès (The Trial, 1962) and twice portraying prostitutes, Doll Tearsheet in Welles' version of Falstaff, Chimes At Midnight (1966), and Virginie in Une Histoire Immortelle the same year.

It was Welles who supported her in her directorial aspirations. In Moreau's first foray behind the camera, Lumière (1975), set in the world of actors, she can also be seen on film, playing opposite Lucia Bosé, who had been her co-star in Marguerite Duras' Nathalie Granger three years earlier. Moreau's second film as director, L'Adolescente (The Adolescent, 1978), deals with the difficult period between childhood and womanhood, with Simone Signoret and Edith Clever delivering outstanding performances.

Moreau documented her continuing interest in actors and acting during a 1984 interview with legendary American silent movie actress Lillian Gish. The art of acting, Moreau believes, has little to do with play-acting, but is rather living in front of the camera. Nothing is closer to life, yet at the same time more removed from it, than cinema.

Gabriele Jatho