In the dazzling whirlwind of the twentieth century, one figure moved like a tightrope walker between words and images, salons and solitude, myth and modernity. Jean Cocteau—poet, playwright, painter, filmmaker—turned his life into a work of art, and his art into a way of life. Christian Soleil, a writer drawn to singular destinies, invites us on an intimate journey into this "fortune made" by an elusive and fiercely independent mind. With sensitivity and precision, he reveals Cocteau in all his facets: the wounded prodigy marked by absence, the tireless inventor of bridges between the arts, the creator of images that sing, disturb, and endure. From Maisons-Laffitte to Milly-la-Forêt, from literary circles to film sets, this book retraces the passions, contradictions, and daring of a genius who believed that poetry was not a genre but a way of breathing. Beyond the masks, Soleil uncovers the man—his humor, his fragilities, his dazzling intuitions—and the legacy of a body of work that continues to question truth, beauty, and the realm beyond reality. Fortune Made is more than a biography. It is a literary walk among the stars of a dreamer, a mirror reflecting both the modernity and the timelessness of an artist who never stopped whispering to those willing to see life as a work in progress.