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Jean Seberg (November 13, 1938 - September 8,
1979) was an American Actor|actress born in
Marshalltown, Iowa, United States|USA who spent an
important part of her career in France.

She was discovered by Otto Preminger, who directed
her in her first two motion pictures. She would go
on to star in thirty-four films in Hollywood and
in France where she lived in Paris with her first
husband, attorney Francois Moreuil.  She became
even more of an icon from her roles in numerous
French films and the tragedy of her turbulent
life.  Among her roles, she co-starred with
Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Luc Godard's classic
work of French New Wave|New Wave cinema,
Breathless (original French title: A bout de
souffle).  

During the latter part of the 1960s, Seberg used
her high-profile image to voice support for the
NAACP and supported native American school groups
such as the Mesquakie Bucks at the Tama settlement
near her home town of Marshalltown, for whom she
purchased $500 worth of basketball uniforms.  She
supported the Black Panther Party.  Then FBI
director, J. Edgar Hoover, since proven to have
illegally kept large files on private citizens,
considered her a threat and in 1970, when she was
seven months pregnant, created a story to leak to
the media that the child she was carrying was not
fathered by her second husband, Romain Gary, but
by a black civil rights activist. Before Hoover's
plan to disgrace her could be implemented, the
story was reported by the Los Angeles Times
newspaper and Newsweek magazine. In a press
conference after the miscarriage she presented the
press with a viewing of her fetus to demonstrate
that the child did not have a father of African
heritage and to expose the malevolent falsehood of
the claim used by the FBI in its illegal
COINTELPRO effort to discredit her and violate her
exercise of her constitutionally protected rights.
Seberg stated that the trauma of this event
brought on premature labor and her child was
stillborn. According to Seberg's husband, after
the loss of their child she suffered from a deep
depression and became suicide|suicidal.

She made several attempts to take her own life,
including throwing herself under a train on the
Paris Métro. Miraculously, she survived the
incident, but less than a year later, in August
1979, she went missing and was found dead eleven
days later in the back seat of her car in a Paris
suburb. The police report stated that she had
taken a massive overdose of barbiturates and
alcohol (8g per litre). 

Jean Seberg was interred in the Cimetière du
Montparnasse, Paris, France. 

In 1995 a documentary of her life was made titled:
Jean Seberg: American Actress.

The short 2000 film Je T'aime John Wayne is a
tribute parody of Breathless, with Camilla
Rutherford playing Seberg's role.

Actress Kirsten Dunst has proposed making a film
about Seberg's life.

Her second husband, Romain Gary, with whom she had
a son, Alexandre Diego Gary, also committed
suicide a year after her death.

Some of Jean Seberg's films were:
* Saint Joan - (1957)
* Bonjour tristesse -  (1958)
* The Mouse That Roared - (1959)
* Breathless - (1959) - (A bout de souffle)
* Five Day Lover - (1961)
* In the French Style - (1962)
* Playtime - (1962)
* Lilith (movie)|Lilith - (1964)
* The Beautiful Swindlers - (1964)
* Backfire - (1964)
* A Fine Madness - (1966) 
* Line of Demarcation - (1966) 
* The Road to Corinth - (1968)
* Birds in Peru - (1968)
* Pendulum (1968 movie)|Pendulum - (1968)
* Paint Your Wagon - (1969)
* Airport (movie)|Airport - (1970)
* L'attentat - (1972)
* Kill! - (1972)
* Camorra (movie)|Camorra  - (1972)
* The Corruption of Chris Miller - (1973)
* Les Hautes solitudes - (1974)
* Grobe Ekstase - (1975)
* White Horses of Summer - (1975)
* The Wild Duck - (1976)