Pascale Petit was born as Anne-Marie Petit in Paris, France in 1938. Before becoming an actress, she worked as a beautician. Her cinema debut was in Les Sorcières de Salem/The Crucible (Raymond Rouleau, 1957) starring Yves Montand and Simone Signoret. Famous author Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the screenplay, based on the play by Arthur Miller. The following year, Pascale Petit’s role as a rich, existentialist kid in Les tricheurs/The Cheaters (Marcel Carné, 1958) made her a star. A scene in which one of her breasts was shown caused a sensation. Hal Erickson notes at AllMovie: "Of the cast, Pascale Petit stands out as a trendy young girl whose willingness to follow the crowd leads to tragedy." She won the prestigious Prix Suzanne Bianchetti in 1958 as the most promising French actress, and soon more roles as a seductive femme fatale followed.
Pascale Petit played in such comedies as Faibles femmes/Three Murderesses (Michel Boisrond, 1959) with Alain Delon and Mylène Demongeot, and Une fille pour l’été/A girl for the Summer (Edouard Molinaro, 1960) opposite Micheline Presle. For a while the media compared her to Brigitte Bardot. In 1959 PP married poet and actor Giani Esposito and followed him to Italy. In the 1960s she was mainly seen in German and Italian B pictures, such as the Spaghetti Western Joe… cercati un posto per morire!/Find a Place to Die (Giuliano Carnimeo, 1968) with Jeffrey Hunter. In 1969 she divorced Esposito and married actor Ray Denton, her co-star of the spy thriller Corrida pour un espion/Code Name: Jaguar (Maurice Labro, 1965).
In the early 1970s Pascale Petit tried to make a comeback in France, as well in the cinema with Chronique d’un Couple…/Chronicle of a Couple (Roger Coggio, 1971) as in the music scene with Il ne reste que moi…/What’s Left is Me (1973). The success was lukewarm and in the following decades she worked as a character actress in unremarkable international films and TV productions. Interesting were a small, delicious Dutch gem, A Strange Love Affair (Eric De Kuyper, Paul Verstraten, 1984), and two TV films by Brigitte Bardot’s Svengali – Roger Vadim, the mini-series La nouvelle tribu/The new tribe (1996), and Un coup de baguette magique/A magic wand (1997), both featuring Marie-Christine Barrault. Pascale Petit has a daughter, Douchka, from her marriage with Giani Esposito. Douchka has been a very successful singer in the 1980s. She was specialized in songs for children, inspired by Walt Disney cartoon heroes.
Text from EuropeanFilmStarPostcards
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