What Makes These French Actresses So Iconic?
They came from France, but their talents know no borders.
A fresh-faced Audrey Tautou burst on the scene 16 years ago in Amélie as the film’s namesake wide-eyed Parisian waitress with a heart of gold whose innocent attempts to anonymously help others — including, in my personal favorite scene, a blind man she comes across on the streets of Montmartre — charmed international audiences and the awards circuit alike. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s whimsically stylized romantic comedy introduced the winsome French actress to the world with what Roger Ebert called “a delicious pastry of a movie.” Tautou’s inherently charming performance as the infectiously optimistic heroine who “like[s] noticing details that no one else notices” is the magic ingredient that keeps said pastry of a film from ever becoming too sweet.
“The haircut, the smile… it’s a perfect part for the perfect actress in the perfect film,” explains Shortlister Michael Rapaport, and it — rightfully — made Audrey Tautou an internationally recognized name who went on to star in a diverse roster of French and American films including Dirty Pretty Things, The Da Vinci Code, Priceless, and Coco Before Chanel.
But Tautou is hardly the first French face to captivate the world with her je ne sais quoi. Far from it. French actresses have been beguiling us with their iconic elegance and witty sophistication for generations. Here, we take a look at the ingenue’s enigmatic peer group, past and present, in the form of 10 breakout French actresses whose talent knows no border.
Brigitte Bardot
Oh, Brigitte Bardot? She’s just a French style icon and one of the most famous sex symbols of all time. No big deal. In 1973, the woman for whom the term “sex kitten” was coined gave up acting and walked away from it all, but before that, B.B. starred in more than 40 films, first becoming a household name with leading role in her then-husband Roger Vadim’s controversial 1956 movie, And God Created Woman.
Leslie Caron
Leslie Caron was discovered by no less a star than Gene Kelly. Caron was working as a professional ballerina when the legendary song and dance man convinced her to appear opposite him in the Cinderella-esque, rags-to-riches story, An American in Paris. A long-term contract with MGM, and starring roles in now classic musicals including Lili and Gigi, followed, cementing her place in classic cinema history.
Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau began her career in the theatre troupe of the Comédie-Française before riding the French New Wave to fame in the Louis Malle’s 1957 murder mystery, Elevator to the Gallows. Her most iconic role, however, remains the free-spirited, enigmatic heroine of François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim, a film that gave us one of the most captivating love triangles of all time and which Roger Ebert called “the most influential and arguably the best of those first astonishing films that broke with the past.”
Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Deneuve is a French film legend whose breakout performance came via 1964’s romantic musical, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Her iconic image as the epitome of the aloof, mysterious French beauty, however, began with Belle de Jour, a 1967 film from Luis Buñuel in which Deneuve stars as a bourgeois Parisian housewife who whiles away her afternoons as a prostitute in an upper-class brothel. In addition to solidifying her sophisticated reputation, the move also kicked off a longstanding partnership between the actress and fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent.
Anouk Aimee
Screen icon Anouk Aimée (real name Françoise Sorya Dreyfus) began acting at the age of 14 and went on to make more than 70 films, eventually earning an Academy Award nomination in 1966 for the romance A Man and a Woman. But it is her starring turns in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and 8½ for which the femme fatale is best remembered.
Juliette Binoche
Most recently, Juliette Binoche made headlines for her work alongside Kristen Stewart in the award-winning Clouds of Sils Maria, but it was her roles in 1996’s The English Patient (for which she won the Academy Award) and 2000’s Chocolat (for which she was nominated) for which she is best known, at least among American audiences. The actress has appeared in more than 60 films, and rose to fame in France acting in films by auteur directors Jean-Luc Godard and André Téchiné, whose 1985 drama Rendez-vous was her breakthrough.
Lea Seydoux
Lea Seydoux first debuted stateside in Quentin Tarentino’s Inglorious Basterds and appeared in The Grand Budapest Hotel, but she made history in 2013 when she was awarded the Palme d’Or, alongside co-star Adele Exarchopoulos and director Abdellatif Kechiche, for the honest, intense love story, Blue is the Warmest Color. How do you follow that? By becoming a Bond Girl.
Click to stream Blue is the Warmest Color on Tribeca Shortlist now.
Charlotte Gainsbourg
The daughter of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin was practically born into the arts and began singing alongside her father at the ripe old age of 12. Since then, she’s made her own mark, releasing four albums and starring in critically acclaimed indies movies like 21 Grams, I’m Not There, and not one, not two, but three Lars von Trier films (Antichrist, for which she won best actress at the 2009 Cannes film festival, Melancholia, and Nymphomaniac).
Marion Cotillard
The enigmatic Marion Cotillard began appearing onscreen at the age of 16 and took home the Best Supporting Actress César in 2005 for her role in Amélie director Jeunet’s A Very Long Engagement, but it was her transformative turn as the singing, boozing embodiment of Édith Piaf in 2007’s La Vie en Rose that truly announced her to the world (and made her the second performer, after Sophia Loren, to ever take home the Best Actress Academy Award for a non-English-speaking role). Since then, she’s charmed the Hollywood A-list, worked with Christopher Nolan and Woody Allen, and even found herself at the center of the international rumor mill. Because nothing means fame like global speculation about your love life.
Isabelle Huppert
In a couple of weeks, Isabelle Huppert is hoping to become the third actress to ever take home the Oscar for a non-English speaking role for her performance as a brutalized woman seeking revenge on her attacker in the French thriller, Elle — and if the Golden Globes can be considered predictive, she’s on her way. But this is far from Huppert’s first go ‘round the movie machine. The iconic actress who is oft-referred to as “the French Meryl Streep” has appeared in more than 100 films and is revered for tackling difficult roles, perhaps the best known of which (before now) was Michael Haneke’s erotic thriller, The Piano Teacher.
Oh la la.
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