As per our current Database, Maria Falconetti is still alive (as per Wikipedia, Last update: May 10, 2020).
Currently, Maria Falconetti is 103 years, 5 months and 0 days old. Maria Falconetti will celebrate 104rd birthday on a Friday 18th of July 2025. Below we countdown to Maria Falconetti upcoming birthday.
| Popular As | Maria Falconetti |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Age | 103 years old |
| Zodiac Sign | Leo |
| Born | July 18, 1921 ( Pantin, Seine [now Seine-Saint-Denis], France, France) |
| Birthday | July 18 |
| Town/City | Pantin, Seine [now Seine-Saint-Denis], France, France |
| Nationality | France |
Maria Falconetti’s zodiac sign is Leo. According to astrologers, people born under the sign of Leo are natural born leaders. They are dramatic, creative, self-confident, dominant and extremely difficult to resist, able to achieve anything they want to in any area of life they commit to. There is a specific strength to a Leo and their "king of the jungle" status. Leo often has many friends for they are generous and loyal. Self-confident and attractive, this is a Sun sign capable of uniting different groups of people and leading them as one towards a shared cause, and their healthy sense of humor makes collaboration with other people even easier.
Maria Falconetti was born in the Year of the Rooster. Those born under the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Rooster are practical, resourceful, observant, analytical, straightforward, trusting, honest, perfectionists, neat and conservative. Compatible with Ox or Snake.
For Falconetti, the performance was an ordeal. Legends from the set tell of Dreyer forcing her to kneel painfully on stone and then wipe all expression from her face – so that the viewer would read suppressed or inner pain. He filmed the same shots again and again, hoping that in the editing room he could find exactly the right nuance in her facial expression.
Born in Pantin, Seine-Saint-Denis, Falconetti became a stage Actress in Paris in 1918. By the time Dreyer watched her act in an amateur theater and selected her as his leading lady in his upcoming production La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, she was already a celebrated stage artiste, and had appeared in one film, La Comtesse de Somerive (1917), directed by Georges Denola and Jean Kemm. Falconetti was 35 years old when she played the role of 19-year-old Joan of Arc in La Passion. Her portrayal is widely considered one of the most astonishing performances ever committed to film, and it would remain her final cinematic role.
After filming Joan of Arc, Falconetti continued with her career as a Producer of light stage comedies, appearing with the Comédie-Française. During the Second World War, she escaped from France first to Switzerland, and then left for Buenos Aires, Argentina. Falconetti had suffered from mental illness all her life, and in 1946 she died in Brazil, allegedly due to a self-imposed restrictive diet after having become significantly overweight. Her remains are interred at Montmartre Cemetery in Paris, section 16 (her gravesite is not listed on official maps). Her grandson Gérard Falconetti also became an actor.
Inspired by Falconetti's performance in Dreyer’s film, the British Artist Guy Denning made over two hundred sketches and thirty finished paintings portraying her. The paintings were exhibited in the crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields Church, Trafalgar Square, London in September 2010.
