French singer, actress and dancer Nicole Crosille was born on October 9, 1936 in Neuilly (Hauts-de-Seine). After studying typing, she took ballet classes at the Comédie-Française and appeared in the musical L'Apprenti fakir with Jean Marais in the late 1950s. At the beginning of the following decade, she made a name for herself as a cabaret singer, from Saint-Germain-des-Prés to New York, where she became the Folies-Bergère revue leader, and recorded her first albums, including Ray Charles covers. A fan of jazz, soul and bossa nova, she met Pierre Barouh, who asked her to sing a duet of the theme from Claude Lelouch's film, with music by Francis Lai. The song "Un homme et une femme", famous for its refrain "Dabadabada, dabadabada", toured the world, while the film went on to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in the spring of 1966. Nicole Croisille was also chosen to sing the theme song for the film Vivre pour vivre, and enjoyed success under the pseudonym Tuesday Jackson with her cover of "I'll Never Leave You" for Marcel Carné's feature film Les Jeunes loups in 1968. Known for her sense of swing in her preferred repertoire, she sang on albums by jazz violinist André Hodeir. Other hits followed in the 1970s with "Une femme avec toi", "Téléphone-moi", "Parlez-moi de lui (Il ne pense qu'à toi)", "Jusqu'au jour où tu partiras", "Je ne suis que l'amour" and others, up to the theme song for the film Les Uns et les autres - in which she played herself - in 1981. In 1985, she sang "Le Blues du businessman" and took part in the charity song "La Chanson de la vie". After appearing at the Paris Olympia in 1976 and 1978, Nicole Croisille returned to the Bataclan in 1988, before another show at the Casino de Paris in 1991 and the lead role in the musical Hello, Dolly at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 1992. The following years were divided between her stage and film roles in Deux mamans pour Noël (1998), and her singing career, with performances at the Olympia in 2003 and 2004. In 2005, she took part in the Dolmen TV series and the show Nougaro, le jazz et moi, which went on to tour and release an album. After writing her autobiography Je n'ai pas vu passer le temps (2006), Nicole Croisille recorded the album Tu Me Manques (2008), reissued under the title Bossa d'Hiver. A final collection of original songs, Arc-en-Ciel, was released in 2014. She then devoted herself to acting, until her illness. Diagnosed with liver cancer, Nicole Croisille died on June 4, 2025 at the age of 88.
