Emmanuelle Riva, a French star of screen and stage who was nominated for an Academy Award for best actress in 2013, has died. She was 89.
Riva died Friday afternoon in a Paris clinic after a long illness, her agent, Anne Alvares Correa, told The Associated Press.
Riva was Oscar-nominated for her role in "Amour, " Michael Haneke's brutal depiction of an aging couple.
With Riva starring alongside another French movie legend, Jean-Louis Trintignant, the film won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film. They played a loving, elderly Parisian couple, one of whom has a stroke.
"Amour" also won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Riva also won best actress at the British Academy Film Awards for her performance. But Jennifer Lawrence won the Academy Award for best actress that year, as a young widow in "Silver Linings Playbook."
In her 60-year career, Riva made an early splash in filmmaker Alain Resnais' acclaimed "Hiroshima Mon Amour" in 1959.
She worked into last year, shooting in Iceland for "Alma," which is still being filmed and edited and will be the last movie to feature Riva, said Correa.
She also will appear on the big screen in "Paris Pieds Nus" (Paris Barefoot), being released in France in March.
Paying tribute, French President Francois Hollande said in a statement that Riva "deeply marked French cinema" and "created intense emotion in all the roles she played."
Civil rights groups call on major corporations to stick with DEI programs
A broad group of civil rights organizations called on the CEOs and board members of major companies Thursday to maintain their commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that have come under attack online and in lawsuits.
An open letter signed by 19 organizations and directed at the leaders of Fortune 1000 companies said companies that abandon their DEI programs are shirking their fiduciary responsibility to employees, consumers and shareholders.
The civil rights groups included the NAACP, the National Organization for Women, the League of United Latin American Citizens, Asian Americans Advancing Justice and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.
"Diversity, equity and inclusion programs, policies, and practices make business-sense and they're broadly popular among the public, consumers, and employees," their statement read. "But a small, well-funded, and extreme group of right-wing activists is attempting to pressure companies into abandoning their DEI programs."
Companies such as Ford, Lowes, John Deere, Molson Coors and Harley-Davidson recently announced they would pull back on their diversity, equity and inclusion policies after facing pressure from conservative activists who were emboldened by recent victories in the courtroom.
Many major corporations have been examining their diversity programs in the wake of a Supreme Court decision last year that declared race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions unconstitutional. Dozens of cases have been filed making similar arguments about employers. Critics of DEI programs say the initiatives provide benefits to people of one race or sexual orientation while excluding others.
In their letter, the civil rights organizations, which also included... Read More