| Toqa Hesham |
A French actress, born in Antony, Seine department, France, as Marie Madeleine Berthe Lebeau. She married twice and did not have children. Her credits include Casablanca (1942), Gentleman Jim (1942), and Angelique (1964). Madeleine was a symbol of French resistance to the Nazi occupiers. Madeleine made her first French film, Girls in Distress, in 1939. She met on stage with the Jewish actor Marcel Dalio, and they got married. When the Nazis pressed their armies to invade France, she fled with her husband to Lisbon. They obtained two visas to Chile, and upon arriving in Mexico, they discovered that the visas were forged, and requested political asylum from several countries until Canada issued them temporary passports, and they headed to Montreal, and from there to the United States of America, with the help of Jewish organizations, who found work for them in the cinema. Her first film after the escape was Hold Back the Dawn (1941). She later separated from her husband and signed a contract with Warner Bros. for 6 months for $100/week. She then continued working in Broadway theaters, until the war ended and she returned to her homeland, France, and continued her career, presenting more than 20 French films. In the late sixties, she participated in two television works, then retired, and in the late eighties, she married the writer Tullio Pinelli. She died in Estepona, Malaga, Spain, on May 1, 2016, as a result of complications following a fracture of the femur.
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