Educated at Iowa University, this blonde actress landed the title role in Otto Preminger's Saint Joan after a much-publicized contest involving some 18,000 hopefuls. The failure of that film, and the only moderate success of her next, Bonjour tristesse, combined to stall Seberg's career, until her role in Jean-Luc Godard's landmark feature, Breathless, brought her renewed international attention. Seberg gave a memorable performance as a schizophrenic in the title role of Robert Rossen's Lilith and was directed by husbands François Moreuil, in Récréation, La, and Romain Gary, in Birds in Peru. Later in her life Seberg became involved in anti-war politics and was the target of an undercover campaign by the FBI to discredit her because of her association with several members of the Black Panther party. She was found dead under mysterious circumstances in a Paris suburb in 1979.
Buried in the exclusive Montparnasse cemetery, Paris, France. Her involvement with the Black Panther movement yielded the attention of the FBI, that spread the rumour about her pregnancy in 1970 being a child by Raymond Hewt, a Black Panther movement leader. She answered the press's innuendo by presenting the (white) body of her daughter Nina in a press conference. The incident may have contributed to her persistent depression over the years, and her decision to take her life in 1979. 2 children: Alexandre Diego Gary (born July 1963) and Nina Hart Gary (born August 23, 1970, died August 25, 1970). Although her husband Romain Gary acknowledged her daughter Nina as his own, during her pregnancy she confessed that she was actually the product of an affair (during a separation from Gary) with a student revolutionary named Carlos Navarra. Daughter Nina died as a result of complications sustained from Jean overdosing on sleeping pills during her pregnancy on August 7, 1970. She was a close friend of Nico, and 'David Keller' . On every subsequent anniversary of her child's Nina's death Jean attempted suicide. In 1978 she somehow survived an attempt wherein she threw herself under a train on the Paris Metro. Rumors flew that Jean's suicide was masterminded by the FBI but it was never proven. Buried in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris, France, her funeral was attended by such notables as Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Bouvoire. Committing suicide in the back seat of an automobile in a Paris suburb area, her body wasn't found until 11 days later. Otto Preminger chose her to play Joan of Arc out of nearly 18,000 hopefuls. Her second marriage to second husband/Russian novelist Romain Gary was tempestuous and profoundly unhappy due to his obsessive, Svengali-like influence on her. Divorced in 1970, she committed suicide in 1979 while he took his own life (gunshot) the very next year.