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In 1936, Anatole was declared bankrupt and lost his hotel and restaurant. “As a child, you don’t really pay attention to talk about money, but I couldn’t ignore it. And one day my mother took me and my sister, who is 10 years younger than me, to England. We had a bungalow in Hove, and later in Littlehampton. I joined the Brownies, and we used to go to the cinema, which had been forbidden in France.”

Her mother never explained why they left France. “But when war was declared she had a retour de flamme. She said,?‘We have to go back.’ It took about six days to cross to Calais, because of the submarines. When we arrived in Paris everyone said, ‘You English will be killed by the Germans.’”

Kathleen was sent to Drancy – from where many others were sent to concentration camps. She returned to Paris, but had to sign in every day at the local police station. In the course of the war, Jeanne took part in the black-market run from Paris to Brittany. That wasn’t all. “Out of arrogance, my friends and I made little yellow stars and wore them. The teachers went mad, and my father was very angry. They were all frightened to death.”

She bunked off Greek lessons to go to the theatre with friends. That’s how she decided she wanted to be an actress – at a performance of Jean Anouilh’s Antigone. “This character was so obstinate and stubborn, saying no and refusing to obey. I thought, ‘That’s it!’

“I was dedicating my life to art. I went to the school of dramatic arts, and then a young actress was needed to play Natasha in Chekhov. I got the part, and I had my picture on the front page of France-Soir, the evening paper. That’s how my father found out that I was acting. He was very angry.”

To be precise: he hit her. But she forgives him. “You have to understand, he was from a peasant family, born in 1887. Being an actress was like being a whore. Now I thank him. He made things difficult, but it forced me to go further.”

When she was 21, Moreau married an actor, Jean-Louis Richard, a day before giving birth to their son, Jérôme. Soon after, Orson Welles saw her on stage and invited her to a party. She accepted. “Many years later, he said, ‘You didn’t notice how attracted I was to you?’ And I said, ‘No, I only saw an icon, a genius.’ He said, ‘We lost everything.’ But I said, ‘No, we have our friendship.’” Arriving home late that night, she found her husband waiting up with her in-laws. They divorced soon after.

Since then, Moreau has had many lovers, including Lee Marvin, and Pierre Cardin, who lived with her for years. Cardin made a speech on the occasion of her joining the Académie des Beaux-Arts. “In Venice, in the Hotel Danieli,” he said, “in that large room where Musset and George Sand lived, we made love, our bodies wrapped around each other. Is there a more beautiful way to live?”

Vanessa Redgrave named Moreau as co-respondent in her 1967 divorce from Tony Richardson. Not for nothing did Luis Buñuel, whom Moreau called her “père espagnol”, tell her that if she was his daughter, he’d lock her up.

One of her most celebrated affairs was with Louis Malle. She had already made several mainstream films when the director, then 24, approached her. “He came backstage one night and said: ‘I’ve been filming with Cousteau, underwater. That’s all I’ve done. But I’ve bought the rights to a book and I want to make a film, and I’d like you to be the star.’ ” The film would have a tiny budget, he said. He’d use a hand-held camera, no make-up and little in the way of lighting. “I thought, God, isn’t that marvellous?” recalls Moreau.

Her agent advised against working with Malle. “He said, ‘This guy has only been filming fishes underwater. What does he know?’” She sacked the agent. Her affair with Malle ended after they made a second film together. Les Amants included a sex scene that, though it showed only her face and hands, caused a scandal. Shooting that scene killed the relationship. “The more I gave to him as a director – the more I opened up to that character on screen – the less was left of our personal relationship.”

Acting, Moreau insists, is about creating something. “When you begin, there is an impulse to expose yourself. But you come to feel responsible. There are parts I refused because I didn’t want to project a certain image of women. When I was 45, I got offers to play women who were jealous of their daughters, or alcoholics. I said, ‘No, I’m not going to do that.’”

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