"Born with a gift of laughter and a sense that all the world was mad". This characterization, borrowed from the work of the late romantic novelist Raphael Sabatini-who was describing his ebullient creation Scaramouche-springs to mind on encountering Adrienne Delorme, the subject of these rictures. Adrienne, a Parisienne starlet, is one of those updated, inexorable individualists to whom life means living, and romance has more to do with adventure than with affairs of the heart. That her world is mad may be attested by a remarkable personal philosophy which puts the vagaries of selfexploitation above all other interests and ambitions. "To live, to feel, to know-these are the things that matter", she avers. "To be an individual in this homogenized world, to do things that are mad, that have no meaning to anyone but yourself; this is the only way to express the inner person, the real person". Adrienne's first love is painting:, she attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Rheims, where she was born and brought up, and then continued at the senior establishment in Paris. Her gift is inherited in part from a 19th-century forebear, the French artist Langlois. Art. however, means more to Adrienne than just painting: "It is a way of life. You can paint in your mind and in your heart. You need never touch a brush. You can experience beauty and lust and tenderness and all the refinements of love and nature and absorb them into yourself. You yourself become the canvas, and life and experience are the brush and palette. I love acting too, and someday I want to become a star. Acting is one way to express yourself as a living canvas. I cannot see why other actors and painters are not aware of this inter-relationship." Her ambition to become an accomplished actress is further fostered by the success of her film-star husband, Yves Delorme. "Yves taught me how to divert my creative energies into serious acting. It was a more practical idea because, until we met. I was in the habit of finding small film parts just to pay the rent. I didn't take it seriously and though acting is a perilous profession from the economic point of view it is far less perilous than painting". To Adrienne. life is a series of surprises. "Everything is an adventure but you must have a sense of adventure to appreciate it. Everything I do, I do with zest. I will try anything once. If I do not know the outcome of a thing so much the better. Discovery is often its own best reward. My favorite person was Eve. Eve was the first and yet the ultimate woman. To her, everything was new and exciting. Life never lost its mystery. If I could be any woman in history I would be Eve-and do you know what? I would take a bite from the apple too."
