Claude Jade

PARIS (AP) - French actress Claude Jade, who starred in several of director Francois Truffaut's best-loved films, has died, a colleague said Saturday. She was 58.

Jade died Friday at a hospital in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, said Jacques Rampal, a playwright she had recently worked with. She had been suffering from eye cancer, which spread, he said.

The young actress caught Truffaut's attention while appearing onstage in Shakespeare's "Henry IV" in the 1960s. He cast her as a young woman in love in the 1968 film "Baisers Voles" (Stolen Kisses), alongside leading man Jean-Pierre Leaud. Truffaut continued the story of the characters' marriage and divorce in "Domicile conjugal" (Bed & Board) and "L'Amour en fuite" (Love on the Run).

Born Claude Jorre, Jade had a role in Alfred Hitchcock's 1969 film "Topaz," about a French spy network, and she also appeared alongside crooner Jacques Brel in the 1969 film "Mon Oncle Benjamin" (My Uncle Benjamin)."

Jade, who was a knight in France's prestigious Legion of Honor, also had a thriving career on the stage.

Her last role was in Rampal's play "Celimene et le Cardinal" (Celimene and the Cardinal), which played in Paris and in festivals this summer. Already suffering from cancer, she wore a plastic eye for her performances, Rampal said. Before she died, she had been reading the script for a television movie that she hoped to shoot this spring, he said.

Jade is survived by a son, Pierre Coste. A funeral will be held Tuesday at the Oratoire du Louvre church in Paris.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press