Valérie Quennessen(1957-1989)
- Actress
Valerie Quennessen became an actress almost by accident. She started
out performing as a child as an acrobat. She was very accomplished in
this field and won an award at the age of ten. However, she hadn't
seriously considered performing for a living. In her late teens, she
enrolled in acting classes as therapy, to overcome severe shyness. To
her surprise, she found she enjoyed it and her abilities were noted
positively by others. So after briefly attending the Ecole Nationale
Superieure des Arts et Techniques du Theatre, she left school to
perform full time. She won supporting roles in various projects. Her
big break was her role in
French Postcards (1979) in 1978.
The following year, she completed her studies and traveled to the
United States to find roles in Hollywood. She won a role as a princess
in
Conan the Barbarian (1982), a
role she accepted because she had enjoyed fairy tales as a child. She
became more familiar to American audiences when she starred in
Summer Lovers (1982) with
Peter Gallagher and
Daryl Hannah. Playing an archaeologist, she
dug at an ancient find and, to everyone's surprise, found some real
ancient pottery from some 3,500 years ago. The film achieved box office
success, in spite of poor reviews. However, afterwards, she left
Hollywood to concentrate on her family life.
In 1989, she died in an automobile accident. She was 31 years old.
In 1989, she died in an automobile accident. She was 31 years old.
