Arielle Dombasle is an American-born French singer, actress, director and model. Her breakthrough roles were in Éric Rohmer's Pauline at the Beach and Alain Robbe-Grillet's The Blue Villa. She also starred in the 1984 miniseries Lace and its 1985 sequel Lace II. Since 1978 she has released twenty-one singles and ten albums and has directed four movies.
Early years
She was born Arielle Laure Maxime Sonnery in Hartford, Connecticut, the daughter of Jean-Louis Melchior Sonnery de Fromental, a silk manufacturer, and Francion Garreau-Dombasle. She descends from French-American immigrants in Mexico under her grandfather's diplomatic tenure. The family's surname was created in 1912, when Dombasle's grandfather René Sonnery, an industrialist from Lyon, married Anne-Marie Berthon du Fromental. Arielle took the pseudonym Arielle Dombasle in memory of her mother who died at the age of 36. She was raised as a Roman Catholic. Dombasle and her brother Gilbert were raised in Mexico by their maternal grandparents after their mother's death in 1964. She attended the Lycée Franco-Mexicain. She was also raised at Château de Chaintré, the Sonnery family estate near Mâcon, Saône-et-Loire. Her maternal grandfather, Maurice Garreau-Dombasle, was a close friend of and advisor to Charles de Gaulle and served as the French ambassador to Mexico. Her maternal grandmother was Man'ha Garreau-Dombasle, a writer and poet who translated Rabindranath Tagore's works into French and was a longtime friend of the science fiction writerRay Bradbury, who dedicated his 1972 novel The Halloween Tree to her.
Career
Dombasle embarked on a career as an actress and singer after attending the Conservatoire International de Musique de Paris and further studies in Mexico. Dombasle has appeared in several Hollywood productions, but most of her acting work has been in French, unlike her albums which are mostly in Spanish and English. She directed four films, Les Pyramides Bleues, Chassé-croisé, Opium and Alien Crystal Palace. She once described her own looks as "a Crazy Horse dancing girl". In 2006, she released both albums Amor Amor and C'est si Bon in the USA. In September 2006, she also performed three nights in a row at the Supper Club in New York City in front of Michael Douglas, John Malkovich, Lauren Bacall, Salman Rushdie, Andrée Putman and Charlie Rose. The latter invited Arielle Dombasle to promote her albums on The Charlie Rose Show. Arielle Dombasle then released several albums in France : Glamour à Mort !, Diva Latina, Arielle Dombasle by ERA and La Rivière Atlantique with French rocker Nicolas Ker. Dombasle joined Les Grosses Têtes, a French radio programme, in January 2016. That same year, Arielle Dombasle released her fragrance, Le Secret d'Arielle, within Mauboussin. The promotional campaign was created by the French artist Leonardo Marcos. Dombasle is the first contestant who was confirmed for the eighth season of Danse avec les Stars. In 2018, along with Mareva Galanter, Inna Modja and Helena Noguerra, Arielle Dombasle recreated the French band Les Parisiennes. Two years later, in 2020, Arielle Dombasle announced she would be releasing a second joint album with Nicolas Ker which is entitled Empire. The album was supposed to be released on April 24, 2020 but was postponed to June 16, 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Personal life
Dombasle is the third wife of writer Bernard-Henri Lévy. They married on June 19, 1993 at Saint-Paul-de-Vence on the Côte d'Azur where they have a villa. She has two stepchildren, Antonin-Balthazar Lévy and Justine Lévy, a novelist. She was previously married to Dr. Paul Albou, described by Vanity Fair as a "playboy society dentist, 32 years her senior." Dombasle is vegetarian. In 2016, she campaigned against abattoirs for PETA.
