"ANGLICKY PREKLAD PROJEVU FRANCOUZSKEHO MINISTRA KULTURY"

Dear Michele Mercier,

I am very happy to receive you this evening with the Ministry for the culture and the communication to testify to you, not only my personal admiration, shared by the in love ones with cinema and theatre, but also the recognition of the French Republic for your talent and your contribution to the international radiation of the French culture. The dance was your first love. As of nine years, you were already small rat with the Opera of Nice, before integrating, seven years later, the Ballets of the Eiffel Tower, in Paris. It is undoubtedly this art which gave you the grace, the sensuality and the elegance which conquered you the largest realizers.

Maurice Chevalier, for which you play a part, as of the 15 years age, in I had seven girls, predicts a career full with success to you.

You will not contradict it. With the studios of Victorine, you meet one day Michel Audiard and Denys of Patellière. The first had written for the second Return of crank, and they still sought an actress for the role of the pretty Jeanne. You are engaged, at 16 years, to turn to the sides of Michele Morgan and Daniel Gélin. Thus the dancer Jocelyne Mercier takes her first steps of actress under the name of Michele, who carried you chance, since it raised you with the firmament of the cinema.

You consequently give the counterpart to the largest actors and turn with the largest realizers: François Truffaut, in Shoot at the pianist, with Charles Aznavour in 1960, Jean-Pierre Melville in the elder one of Ferchaux in 1963, with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Charles Vanel, whom you find in Symphonie for a massacre of Jacques Deray, with also Michel Auclair. Denys of Patellière offers new large roles to you, in 1965, in the thunder of God, with Jean Gabin and Robert Hossein, then the following year in black Sun, where you find Daniel Gélin.

You very quickly become an international high-speed motorboat and turn with large Italian realizers: Free Rossi for High inaccuracy, with Nino Manfredi in 1963, Dino Risi, for It giovedi and the Monsters, the same year, in which also Vittorio Gassman and Ugo Tognazzi played, Mario Monicelli for Casanova, in 1964, in which you give the counterpart to immense Marcello Mastroianni.

Your glory even makes you cross the Atlantic: since 1961, Anatole Litvak offers a role in Aimez to you you Brahms?, with Yves Montand, Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Perkins. In 1970, you play Aila, in the Fighters, of Peter Collinson, at the sides of three giants of the American cinema, Charles Bronson, Patrick Magee and Tony Curtis. Two years later, it is in Charlton Heston that you give the counterpart in the Call of the forest, of Ken Annakin.

I cannot quote here the exceptional list of the realizers and the actors with whom you turned, of the emblématiques great names of Hollywood until the talents of the New Wave.

If the spectators adulated you under the features of the Marchioness of the Angels, which sat your international fame, your exceptional career cannot, we know it all, to summarize itself in mythical Angélique, in spite of their immense popularity "I am not Angélique" you entitled your autobiography published in 2002.

But your incarnation of this woman, free, sensual, combative, of this romantic heroin, impassioned, vibrating, marked the spirit of the public deeply. The character of Anne and Serge Golon had already been an enormous best-seller, you offered five triumphs to him to the cinema, under the direction of Bernard Borderie, at the sides of Robert Hossein, but also of Claude Giraud, Jean Rochefort and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

"This character, it is me, it agrees to me perfectly,
I do not have the impression to play", have you says. Perhaps is this for this reason that the public instinctively set you up with the row of myth, at the same time as the heroin which you incarnate? Perhaps is this for this reason that among the innumerable letters of admirors whom you receive then - and that you still receive - some were marked sometimes only "Angelica, Marquise of the Angels, Versailles"? For the public, which testified a love to you, an admiration, a devotion exceptional, you were and you will remain a long time - a little too perhaps according to you - this Angelica legendary, proud and beautiful to die.

Impassioned and voluntary, you post yourselves today with the young talents of the new vagueness of the French cinema, and in particular Sophie Blondy, which recently directed you in the Tale of Isis.

I am very happy to honour this evening a large injury with the French cinema, an actress worship, with the exceptional destiny, which collected the love of all the spectators and carried the French cinema beyond the borders and the Oceans.

Dear Michele Mercier, in the name of the Republic, we make you knight in the order of Arts and the Letters.