Dani

French actress and singer Dani (1944-2022) started her career as a mannequin and nightclub singer. She became known for her role as the scriptgirl Lilliane in François Truffaut's La nuit américaine/Day for Night (1973) and L'amour en fuite/Love on the Run (1979).


French promotion card by Olympia, Bruno Coquatrix.

La nuit américaine

Dani was the stage name of Danièle Graule, initially listed as Dany Graule. She was born in 1944 in Castres, Tarn, France. She was the eldest of three children. Her father was a shoemaker and her mother, of Catalan origin, was a shoe saleswoman.

In 1963, at the age of 19, she left Perpignan to attend the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She was hired by the newspaper Jours de France to take photos and began a career as a model with Catherine Harlé's agency. She attended fashionable parties at the Café de Flore, La Rhumerie, Castel and the Publicis drugstore. She met Zouzou and Jimi Hendrix at a festival in Juan-les-Pins, posed for Jacques Séguéla on the cover of L'Express and got involved with Benjamin Auger, a photographer from Salut les copains.

In 1965, she appeared in the video clip for the hit 'Tout se passe dans les yeux' performed by Dick Rivers. In 1966 she was contracted to Pathé-Marconi and released her first single 'Garçon manqué' (Tomboy). In 1968 her song 'Papa vient d'épouser la bonne' (Daddy just married the maid) sold a million copies and was a major hit.

She made her film debut with a small role in La ronde/Circle of Love (Roger Vadim, 1964) with Jane Fonda. Roles followed in such films as La fille d'en face/The Girl Across the Way (Jean-Daniel Simon, 1968), Delphine (Eric Le Hung, 1969) with Dany Carrel, and Tumuc Humac (Jean-Marie Périer, 1971) opposite Marc Porel.

She had her breakthrough in the cinema when she played the script-girl Liliane in François Truffaut's La nuit américaine/Day for Night (1974). Liliane is the fickle girlfriend of actor Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud) who is recruited as a script trainee, but she is pinching for the English stuntman. In 1978, this Liliane became the friend of Christine Doinel alias Claude Jade in the final film of the Antoine Doinel cycle, L'amour en fuite/Love on the Run (1979). Later, she has an affair with her friend's husband Antoine, again Jean-Pierre Léaud. Thanks to the installation of new and old scenes, Claude Jade also mounted in the flashbacks of Day for Night, it seems Dani was already part of the Doinel Cycle.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.


French postcard by Corvisart, Epinal.

Her dark years and her resurrection

Dani was topbilled in Quelques messieurs trop tranquilles/Some Too Quiet Gentlemen (Georges Lautner, 1973), and appeared opposite Les Charlots in Et vive la liberté!/And Long Live Liberty (Serge Korber, 1978). In 1974, she was to represent France in the Eurovision Song Contest with the song 'La Vie a 25 ans' (Life at 25), written by Christine Fontane, but the entry was withdrawn due to the death of President Georges Pompidou in the week of the competition.

Her only English language record release to date was 'That Old Familiar Feeling', which had the same music as 'La Vie à 25 ans' but with English lyrics by British singer-songwriter Lynsey de Paul. In 1975, Dani was again offered Eurovision. She imposed Serge Gainsbourg as her songwriter, who wrote and composed the song 'Comme un boomerang' (Like a Boomerang). However, her application was rejected because Antenne 2 considered some of the lyrics unsuitable for the contest. Dani and Gainsbourg, not wanting to change the song or even certain passages, withdrew.

Dani opened L'Aventure, a trendy nightclub in Paris, a mythical place that made her the muse of Parisian nights until the early 1980s. Having retired to her house in the Vaucluse, she published the book 'Drogue, la galère' in 1987, in which she recounts her dark years and her resurrection. Throughout her career, Dani rarely appeared on stage or in the cinema. She mostly worked in her flower shops. Dani's later films included Une affaire de femmes/A Story of Women (Claude Chabrol, 1988) starring Isabelle Huppert, J'ai pas sommeil/I can't sleep (Claire Denis, 1994), and À mort la mort!/Death to death! (Romain Goupil, 1999). In the new century, she had her biggest hit song with 'Comme un boomerang', the song written in 1975 by Serge Gainsbourg. She re-recorded it as a duet with Étienne Daho in 2001.

In the cinema, she appeared in supporting roles in Violence des échanges en milieu tempéré/Work Hard, Play Hard! (Jean-Marc Moutout, 2003) with Jérémie Renier, Les clefs de bagnole/The Car Keys (Laurent Baffie, 2003), Fauteuils d'orchestre/Orchestra Seats (Danièle Thompson, 2006), and Parlez-moi de vous/On Air (Pierre Pinaud, 2012) starring Karin Viard. For her part in Fauteuils d'orchestre, Dani was nominated for a César award for the Best Supporting Actress.

In the last decade, she played parts in such films as Mon roi/My King (Maïwenn, 2015) starring Vincent Cassel, Carbone/Carbon (Olivier Marchal, 2017), Guy (Alex Lutz, 2018) and Bronx (Olivier Marchal, 2020), her final film. In 2016, she published another autobiography, 'La nuit ne dure pas'. Last year, in 2022, Dani died in her home in Tours, following a heart attack. She was 77. Dani had a son, Julien (born 1969) from her union with photographer Benjamin Auger, whom she met in 1964. She also raised Benjamin Auger's eldest son Emmanuel (1964). After twenty years together, the couple separated without divorcing in the mid-1980s.


French promotion card by Vogue. Photo: G. Bensimon.

Sources: Hans Beerekamp (Het Schimmenrijk - Dutch), Wikipedia (French), and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 23 November 2023.