My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them

Jeanne Moreau (1928): Living Dangerously with Jeanne

103 Jeanne Moreau Living Dangerously with Jeanne Collin Kelley Growing up gay and poor was a double whammy. Having wanderlust from the age of twelve didn’t help either. For the first twenty-four years of my life, I couldn’t afford to leave the South, so foreign films became my passport to far-flung locales like Berlin, London, and Paris. Watching Wim Wenders’s angels soar in Wings of Desire, Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren as gangster and moll shooting up the Thames in The Long Good Friday, and Jeanne Moreau walk heartbroken through the City of Lights to a jazz riff by Miles Davis in 104 Elevator to the Gallows transported me to a world I longed to explore . It was Moreau—with her down-turned mouth and dark circles under her eyes—that lit a creative spark in me that has never dimmed. Eventually, I would take my own walk through Paris at night, lamenting over a lover who had spurned me, and like Moreau, I would let the rain soak me in some vain attempt to be washed clean. Jeanne Moreau is one of the original divas, and she’s French, so that makes her allure even stronger. Even now, in her eighties, she remains a beauty so startling that you have to look twice. A lifelong cigarette habit seems to have worked in her favor rather than against. If there is any doubt that French women age differently than other mortals, one only has to look at Moreau to know there must be something in the wine or tobacco. From her unconventional looks, to her high-profile love affairs, to her willingness to take on roles many actresses would run from, Moreau continues to be a vibrant and engaging presence in international cinema. Moreau has been a muse and a guide to me as a poet. When I crave inspiration, I only need to watch one of her many films to find it in the characters she’s created. She refused to let directors and producers lather her up in makeup to hide what they considered flaws. She told them, literally, to go to hell. And to the moralists and critics who decried her “wanton sensuality,” she thumbed her nose by choosing even more polarizing and challenging films. Moreau also famously said in a 1996 interview with film journalist and critic Molly Haskell that she doesn’t feel guilt at her choices. “Whatever I wish to do, I do. . . . But if you want to live, and live your life through to the end, you have to live dangerously. And one thing you have to give up is attaching importance to what people see in you” (Interview Magazine, September 1, 1996). This has been my motto as a gay man and writer ever since: no guilt, living the life I want and not one dictated to me by super ficial gay men or heterosexuals of any gender, and not worrying what others think of me. I was never a young beauty, or a Jeanne Moreau 105 clotheshorse or interested in clubbing. I was far more interested in using my mind for seduction, exploring the world and my own sexual appetites. I have sought out challenging men, marked them for seduction, just to see where the relationship would go and what I could mine from it for my art. Saying exactly what is on my mind without fear of repercussion has been another hallmark of my life, just as it has been for Moreau. She’s been an excellent mentor. Although I’ve never met her, whenever I walk the streets of Paris, I always feel like she’s leading me by the hand. In 2000 Salon magazine declared that “deification of divas” by gay men had become an anachronism. Maybe Judy, Bette, and Joan have become a bit clichéd, but I’ve always looked for another kind of woman to whom I can build shrines. Sure, divas all have some of the same qualities: larger than life, bucking the system, a string of shitty men. Moreau fits that bill perfectly, but she transcends the stereotype by force of will. Many of the cherished divas died young or created such indelible roles (Judy as Dorothy, Bette as Eve, or Joan as . . . well . . . Joan) that it’s hard to separate the icon from the real woman. Moreau has played so many eclectic roles...