Seberg, out in UK cinemas this Friday, isn’t a straight biopic about Jean Seberg, the actress once described as “the golden sunflower girl” from the Midwest who went on to become the darling of the French New Wave cinema after Jean-Luc Godard immortalized her in Breathless. Its focus is her deadly entanglement with the FBI who admitted days after her suicide at 40 that, under J Edgar Hoover’s instruction, they had plotted to ruin her reputation because of her involvement in political causes and her support of the Black Panther Party. They planted the false rumour that Seberg was pregnant by a Black Panther Party member to “cheapen her image” with the American public. Gossip columnists followed the false leads and her life started to come apart, with the baby she was carrying, arriving prematurely and dying.
She had a stream of Hollywood hits including Otto Preminger’s Bonjour Tristesse but she became increasingly tormented by the FBI smear campaign. She was found dead from an overdose in her car in Paris aged 40, her body badly decomposed. It was written off as suicide though there were questions about whether she’d been helped.
She was born 13 November 1938 5.15 am Marshalltown, Iowa and started acting in her late teens. Her emotional life was complicated – with a brief early abusive marriage; then she hitched up with novelist Romain Gary and had a son; then she had a daughter who died by a student revolutionary; followed by a third husband whom she left for an Algerian who persuaded her to cash in her flat and give him the money before she died. There were stories of multiple failed suicide attempts before. Romain Gary blamed the FBI for her deteriorated mental state.
She was a Sun Scorpio opposition a 7th house Uranus, which would go a long way to explain her constantly revolving partners. That opposition squared onto Jupiter in Aquarius so she did have confidence and would have felt no inclination to put limits on what she wanted. She also has a harsh, hard-edged Mars opposition Saturn, which would be why she kept attracting herself into abusive relationships. She also had an intensely possessive and controlling Moon Pluto in Leo on her Midheaven.
When she died tr Uranus in Scorpio was hovering around the opposition to her natal Uranus and moving to conjunct her Sun which would make her excessively restless. But more than that it was emotionally a very stressed and depressing time with her Solar Arc Venus square her destructive Mars and Saturn; and tr Saturn exactly conjunct her Solar Arc Moon (and Pluto).
Such a muddled life with a tragic and sordid end.
Add on: J Edgar Hover: 1 January 1895 7.30am Washington, DC.
Hoover’s deeply unpleasant and cruel Mars in Taurus opposition Saturn Midheaven in Scorpio squared onto her Moon Pluto Midheaven which would certainly set her up as a target for his destructive impulses and make them implacable enemies. His Capricorn Sun squared her Mars opposition Saturn which had already attracted to her abusive situations – and this was just another one of a different order. His Uranus was conjunct her Sun upending her life and image. And his scandal-prone Neptune Pluto fell in her 8th for behind-the-scenes smears. A mismatch made in hell.
Thanks, Marjorie. Any interesting links between her chart and J. Edgar Hoover’s? Or the FBI’s?