Slim, gamine, pale-skinned and a real brunette stunner, Francoise Dorleac graced a number of movies before hitting stardom, but that all changed with Francois Truffaut's melodrama La Peau Douce (The Soft Skin) and the classic James Bond-like spy spoof L'Homme de Rio (That Man from Rio), both released in 1964. The two films showed the polar sides of Francoise's incredible allure and talent. In the former she played an airline stewardess who falls into a tragic affair with a married businessman (Jean Desailly) and in the latter she played a fun and flaky heroine opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Unlike Catherine, Francoise proved a carefree, outgoing presence both on and off camera. Known for her chic, stylish ways and almost unbridled sense of joie-de-vivre, she continued making strong marks as the adulterous wife in Roman Polanski's black comedy Cul-de-Sac (1966) and even joined Gene Kelly, George Chakiris and her sister, who was now a cinematic star by this time too, in the rather candy-coated The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), a colorful movie which paid homage to the Hollywood musical. She and Catherine, who looked quite similar, played singing twins who dream about living in Paris.

Branching out now in such non-French films as Genghis Khan (1965), Where the Spies Are (1965) and Billion Dollar Brain (1967), the radiant Francoise was on the brink of international stardom when her sports car flipped and burned on a roadway in Nice, France on June 26, 1967. Her early death at age 26 most certainly robbed the cinema of a tried and true talent and incomparably beautiful mademoiselle who had every signs of taking on Hollywood, as Catherine later did successfully.