Claude Jade, the daughter of English-teachers, was a student at the "Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique" in Dijon. In 1966, she won a Prize for best actress on stage (Agnès in Molière's "L'école des femmes"). She was also a student on the Acedemy in Paris (teacher: Jean-Laurent Cochet), appeared in a TV series, and on stage in Paris, and made her first movie, Baisers volés (1968) ("Stolen Kisses") directed by François Truffaut. He proposed to marry her in Spring 1968, but she later married Bernard Coste (son Pierre was born in 1976), a diplomat with whom she also lived for some years in Russia.