Winifred Jacqueline Fraser Bisset LdH (/ˈbɪsɪt/ BISS-it; born 13 September 1944) is a British actress. She began her film career in 1965 and first came to prominence in 1968 with roles in The Detective, Bullitt, and The Sweet Ride, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination as Most Promising Newcomer. In the 1970s, she starred in Airport (1970), The Mephisto Waltz (1971), Day for Night (1973), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Le Magnifique (1973), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), St. Ives (1976), The Deep (1977), The Greek Tycoon (1978) and Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978), which earned her a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical.
Bisset's other film and TV credits include Rich and Famous (1981), Class (1983), her Golden Globe-nominated role in Under the Volcano (1984), her CableACE Award-nominated role in Forbidden (1985), Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989), Wild Orchid (1990), her Cesar Award-nominated role in La Cérémonie (1995), Dangerous Beauty (1998), her Emmy-nominated role in the miniseries Joan of Arc (1999), Britannic (2000), The Sleepy Time Gal (2001), Domino (2005), a guest arc in the fourth season of Nip/Tuck (2006), Death in Love (2008), and the BBC miniseries Dancing on the Edge (2013), for which she won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Series, Miniseries or Television Film.
Bisset has since appeared in Welcome to New York (2014), Miss You Already (2015), The Last Film Festival (2016), Backstabbing for Beginners (2018) and Birds of Paradise (2021). She received France's highest honour, the Legion of Honour, in 2010. She speaks English, French, and Italian.
Early life
Bisset was born Winifred Jacqueline Fraser Bisset in Weybridge, Surrey, England, the daughter of George Maxwell Fraser Bisset (1911–1982), a general practitioner, and Arlette Alexander (1914–1999), a lawyer-turned-housewife. Her mother was of French and English descent and her father was of Scottish descent; Bisset's mother cycled from Paris and boarded a British troop transport to escape the Germans during World War II.
Bisset grew up in Tilehurst, near Reading, Berkshire, in a 17th-century country cottage, where she now lives part of the year. She has an older brother, Max (b. 1942), a Florida-based business consultant; they have a paternal half-brother named Nick (b. circa 1981), who was just an infant when their father died aged 70. Her mother taught her to speak French fluently, and she was educated at the Lycée Français de Londres in London. She took ballet lessons as a child and began taking acting lessons while working as a fashion model to pay for them. When Bisset was a teenager, her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Bisset's parents divorced in 1968 after 28 years of marriage.
