Cecile Aubry, a French actress who had a short but glamorous film career and who later became a writer, creating a children’s television series, died Monday in Dourdan, outside of Paris. She was 81.

The cause was lung cancer, Agence France-Presse reported, citing family sources.

Aubry was just 20 when she appeared in the racy title role of “Manon,” a 1949 film by Henri-Georges Clouzot set in post-World War II France.

Seized on by Hollywood, she was immediately cast in “The Black Rose,” a medieval adventure story filmed in England and Morocco that also starred Tyrone Power and Orson Welles.

Her film career was short-lived, however: She made a half-dozen more movies in Europe, the last in 1960.