Francoise Blanchard

About Francoise Blanchard

Françoise Denise Aline Blanchard was a French actress best known for her starring role as Catherine Valmont in Jean Rollin's 1982 horror film La morte vivante (The Living Dead Girl), where she played a woman reanimated as a zombie/vampire-like creature. She also appeared in films like Caligula and Messalina (1981) and Nero and Poppea - An Orgy of Power (1982), and worked as an art director on some projects. Her career spanned from the 1970s to 2013, often in cult horror and exploitation cinema.
She died on May 24, 2013 (some sources list May 29, but Wikipedia and most reliable references confirm May 24), at age 58 in Caen, Calvados, France—twelve days before her 59th birthday. The cause of death was not publicly disclosed or reported in any major sources, including her Wikipedia page, IMDb, obituaries in film blogs (e.g., Video Watchdog), and industry tributes. No official coroner details, family statements, or news articles specify illness, accident, or other circumstances; it's consistently noted as undisclosed.