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Jean Dorothy Seberg (November 13, 1938 – August 30, 1979) was an American actress. She starred in 37 films in Hollywood and in France. Seberg became even more of an icon after her roles in numerous French films and the tragedy of her turbulent life and eventual probable suicide.

Seberg was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, the daughter of Dorothy (née Benson), a substitute teacher, and Edward Seberg, who was a druggist. Her family was Lutheran and of Swedish ancestry.Seberg studied at the University of Iowa.

Seberg made her film debut in 1957 in the title role of Saint Joan, from the Shaw play, after being chosen from 18,000 hopefuls. Thrust into the glaring spotlight and subject of countless Cinderella stories, expectations were high, but reviews of the film were generally mediocre, they praised Seberg`s beauty, and found her in over her head playing Joan. Director Otto Preminger never came to her defense. Seberg also appeared in the 1959 Peter Sellers comedy, The Mouse that Roared, made in the UK.

Her iconic status though, comes from her role as Patricia in Jean-Luc Godard`s Breathless (original French title: À bout de souffle), a major work of the French New Wave, in which she co-starred with Jean-Paul Belmondo.

In 1969, she appeared in her first and only musical film, Paint Your Wagon, based on Lerner and Loewe`s stage musical, and co-starring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood, but her singing voice was dubbed. Seberg starred alongside Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jacqueline Bisset and several other stars in the disaster film, Airport (1970).

Although Seberg had success with Paint Your Wagon and Airport, bad press and several personal issues nearly ruined her career. Her last US film appearance was in the TV movie Mousey (1974). She was François Truffaut`s first choice for the central role of Julie in La Nuit Américaine but, after several fruitless attempts to contact her, Truffaut gave up and cast Jacqueline Bisset instead. Her state of mind may have been responsible for a missed opportunity in 1973. Seberg would only appear in European films during the last years of her life.

Seberg married Francois Moreuil, a French movie director who directed her in La récréation (1961), in 1958; they divorced in 1960, as a result of her affair with French author and diplomat Romain Gary. In 1962, while pregnant with their son Alexander Diego, she married Gary, who was 24 years her senior and had divorced his wife, British writer Lesley Blanch, for her. (Blanch, who had endured her husband`s infidelities for decades, declared his new wife not intellectual enough for him, dismissing the actress as "a very pretty, randy young woman, a little bit vulgar".) When Gary discovered Seberg was having an affair with Clint Eastwood during the shooting of Paint Your Wagon, he confronted them both and challenged Eastwood to a duel. Eastwood ducked out. Shortly thereafter Gary decided to end the marriage.

During the later part of the 1960s, Seberg used her high-profile image to privately voice support for the NAACP and supported Native American school groups such as the Mesquaki Bucks at the Tama settlement near her home town of Marshalltown, for whom she purchased $500 worth of basketball uniforms. She also supported the Black Panther Party. Though she had done nothing illegal, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover considered her a threat to the American state. Her telephone was tapped and her private life was closely observed.

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