Fashion model, operatic singer, adored muse of countless creative artists, Arielle Dombasle is an enigmatic figure whose life has been intense and creative fairy tale.

Born in States in Norwich on 27 April, 1958 she spent her childhood in Mexico. Granddaughter of the French ambassadors in Mexico and daughter of an industrialist father, who was also an accomplished archaeologist and serious collector of pre-Colombian art, Arielle Dombasle grew up surrounded by Aztec, Mayan, and Olmec icons and sevended by the most proeminent latin artists as Rufino, Tamayo, Octavio Paz, Julio Costazar, Carlos Fuentes or Tamara de Lempicka, a country whose strict Catholicism indelibly marked her for ever.

After fifteen years of classical dance training, and having followed a trilingual secondary education (French, English, and Spanish) at the Franco-Mexican highschool, she left Mexico in 1976 at the age of eighteen to study music and vocal training in Paris (conservatoire de musique), she started performing in theatre, dance, and cinema.

Chosen by Eric Rohmer to act and sing in Perceval le Gallois, she would go on to do four other films with him, followed quickly by others : Roman Polanski, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Raoul Ruiz, Cédric Kahn, Patrick Mimouni or John Malkovich.

Arielle Dombasle would become increasingly impossible to categorise going from Henry James master pieces or theatre. Singing and dancing several themes at the Opera Comique after her debuts making big successful commercial features and tremedous hits with her singing records.

Her debuts in 1978 in Perceval le Gallois by Eric Rohmer, where she was the leading lady Blanche Fleur would open a serie of major films with one of the most prestigious French Director. This master of France’s Nouvelle Vague offered her a role, written twenty years earlier for Brigitte Bardot, in Pauline à la Plage, later working with her again in Le Beau Mariage as well as L’Arbre, le maire et la médiathèque, in 1993. With her unique blend of candour and sophistication, Arielle Dombasle became a source of inspiration for the literary, demanding cinema, ranging from Alain Robbe-Grillet to Peter Handke. She was also a familiar figure in Raoul Ruiz’s baroque, Chilean universe, starring in Le Temps retrouvé, Fado, majeur et mineur, A propos de Nice and Les Ames fortes en 2001.

After a brilliant foray in American television, playing one of the leading roles in the great 1980s mini-series Lace, which captured 65 million viewers, and making an appearance on the very popular Miami Vice, Arielle Dombasle will also successfully incarnate on television legendary characters like Sissi, impériatrice rebelle by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe in 2004 and Milady by Josée Dayan in 2006.

Although long considered an intellectual actress, Arielle Dombasle appeared in several successful film comedies in the 1990’s, such as Hervé Palud’s Un Indien dans la Ville and, in 1994, Claude Zidi’s Astérix et Obélix contre César, who broke the record on French market.

Inquisitive and impassioned, she would be one of France’s first young actresses to step behind the camera, directing Chassé-croisé in 1982 and Les Pyramides bleues in 1988 where she directed Omar Shariff, Pierre Clémenti, Pascal Gregory, Alexandra Stewart and even Roman Polanski.

Decorated with the Légion d’honneur in 2007 for her lifetime achievement, Arielle Dombasle has also received several prizes including the Berlin Festival’s Silver Bear Award for Pauline à la plage, 1st Prize at the New York Festival for Miroslava d’Alejandro Pelayo in 1993, nominated for the Caesar Award for best actress in Cédric Kahn’s L’ennui, and the Cabourg Festival’s prize for most romantic actress in Raoul Ruiz’s Les Ames fortes. An outsized personality, she quickly became a cult figure.

It would be difficult, however, to attempt to define so multi-faceted and enigmatic artist. Indeed, it is in the realm of song that she would reveal the true range of her depth and talent: becoming one of the most popular female singers in France, four hit albums (Extase, Liberta, Amor, Amor and C’est si bon), four gold records and a double platinum album, as well as packed concert halls in France and abroad (L’Olympia in 2005, Le Théâtre des Champs Elysées in 2006) made her a solid concert value.

Her most recent album, C’est si bon harkens back to post-war America and the golden age of Broadway. As was the case for Amor, Amor, (more than 700 000 copies sold, fering up a latin jazzy sound calypseos, rumbas, boleros from the 40 to the 60, recreating the most enchanting sounds of the era. Her successful September 2006 Broadway appearances at New York’s mythical Supper Club with the Joe Battaglia New York City Band were followed by a series of concerts and international appearances including Canada, Turkey and Greece.

Rebaptized Dolorès Suggar Rose in February 2007 for her triumphant show at the Crazy Horse, the Parisian temple of the nude, Arielle Dombasle, live and accompanied by the legendary dancers, will dance and sing in several “tableaux” of a burning sensuality directed by Molly Molloy (costumes by Vincent Darré and Thierry Mugler). “Arielle Dombasle at the Crazy Horse,” the DVD of December 2007, restores for us the mot spectacular moments of the show à guichets fermés.

After playing in Jérôme Savary’s La belle et la toute petite bête at the Opéra Comique in 2003, she triumphs at the Théâtre de Paris with him in 2008, during eighty performances in “Don Quichotte contre l’Ange bleu,” a musical fable that is unanimously hailed by the critics and in which she plays Marlene Dietrich.

Her new album Glamour à mort, written and produced by Philippe Katerine and Gonzalez (Sony-Columbia) has been unanimously praised by critics. A mystico-pop album, arrangement by Gonzales and mix by Renaud Letang, is being called the “album of the year”.

Angel of light or star of the night under the spotlights of caberets, she is decidely the most irresistable of the divas of modern times.