Took to film work during WWII as a means of supporting her family after her father, a Jewish linguist, had fled to London to join the Free French Army. With her sensuous, heavy-featured face, Signoret was not a conventional film beauty, but her distinctive look and dusky voice combined with her formidable talent to produce a unique and enduring image of French womanliness. Projecting both hard-bitten cynicism and a provocative earthiness, she was appearing in featured roles by the mid-1940s, typically playing fallen, grasping or luckless women. Signoret's notable early films include the
