While performing as Frida in Pirandello's Henri IV, in a production by Sacha Pitoëff at the Théâtre Moderne, Jade was discovered by New Wave film Director François Truffaut. He was "completely taken by her beauty, her manners, her kindness, and her joie de vivre", and cast her in the role of Christine Darbon in Stolen Kisses (1968). During the filming, Truffaut fell in love with her, and there was talk of marriage. Truffaut dubbed Claude Jade “French cinema’s little sweetheart” and the Director and his muse were soon a couple in real life, although Truffaut changed his mind about marrying her the night before their wedding. American critic Pauline Kael wrote that Jade "seems a less ethereal, more practical Catherine Deneuve". Playing the same character, Jade appeared in two more movies by Truffaut, Bed and Board (1970), and Love on the Run (1979). Truffaut uses the occasion to examine three states, three ages, of his heroine, played with the right middle-class gentility and innocence by Claude Jade: loved from a distance (Stolen Kisses); married and misled (Bed and Board); divorced but still on good terms (Love on the Run).