(born 1940)

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French actress of Danish origin

Hanne Karen Blarke Bayer
b. Copenhagen, Denmark

A former model, Karina appeared in commercials and a short film in Denmark before moving to Paris in 1959.

Her meeting with Jean-Luc Godard was decisive for both.

Godard's 'Karina Years' (during most of which they were married) include seven features: Le Petit soldat (1960, rel. 1963), Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (1961), Vivre sa vie/My Life to Live (1962), Bande ŕ part/Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965) Made in U.S.A. (1967).

The stunningly beautiful Karina was central to Godard's (and the New Wave's) vision of a 'new' feminity: sensual, but also sensitive and intellectual, epitomised in the dreamy close-ups of Karina in Vivre sa vie: smoking, reading, talking philosophy in cafes, crying at the cinema (Jeanne Moreau embodied another version of the New Wave woman).

Karina starred in a few other auteur films, such as Michel Delville's Ce soir ou jamais (1961) and Jacques Rivette's La Religieuse (1965, rel. 1967). Her career lost momentum after the split with Godard' although she directed Vivre ensemble in 1973, a telling document on the libertarian ethos of the 1960s and the early 1970s.

Karina has been married four times and is currently seperated from her fourth husband, Dennis Berry.