A highly successful fashion model before reaching the age of 20, Paris-born Dominique Sanda was still enough of an "unfamiliar" face to appeal to director Robert Bresson. Characteristically avoiding casting established stars in his films, Bresson spotlighted Dominique in 1969's Une Femme Douce. It is difficult to tell how much of Dominique's excellent performance was due to her own innate ability or to Bresson's painstaking tutelage, but the fact remains that the film firmly established the actress as a top screen personality. She went on to deliver first-rate work in such films as Vitorio De Sica's Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970), John Huston's The Mackintosh Man (1973) and Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 (1976), and was equally noteworthy under the direction of Mauro Bolognini in The Inheritance (1976), for which she won a Cannes Festival prize.