Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard | |
|---|---|
| File:Cotillard Cabourg.jpg Marion Cotillard, 2006 | |
| Years active | 1990s–present |
| Website | http://www.cotillard.net |
Marion Cotillard (born September 30 1975) is an Academy Award-, BAFTA-, Czech Lion-, Golden Globe-, and two-time César Award-winning French actress who has appeared in over fifty films in France. Cotillard won the Academy Award for Best Actress, BAFTA, Golden Globe, Czech Lion, and her second César Award for her role as legendary French chanteuse Édith Piaf in La Vie En Rose. She became the first person to ever win an Academy Award for a performance entirely in the French language.
Career
Cotillard began acting during her childhood, appearing on stage in one of her father's plays.[1] After a few roles on television, her career as a film actress began in the mid-1990s with small but noticeable roles in such films as Pierre Grimblat's Lisa alongside the iconic Jeanne Moreau, Swiss novel-adaptation drama War In The Highlands [2], Coline Serreau's comedy La Belle Verte, or Alexandre Aja's anticipation fantasy Furia among other participations in established directors' productions. She rose to prominence in the late 1990s when she was cast in the Luc Besson production Taxi (1998) as Lili Bertineau, a minor role that she reprised in two sequels. She then earned very good reviews and the attention of cinephiles via her portrayal of twins who exchange their lives after one of them dies in Les Jolies Choses/Pretty Things adapted from the work of subversive feminist novelist Virginie Despentes in which she sang live on stage a couple of songs she had co-written.
In 2003, she had a small role in Tim Burton's film, Big Fish, which introduced her to English-speaking audiences. She also played Sophie Kowalski in Yann Samuell's Jeux d'enfants (English title: Love Me If You Dare), in which she played a complex yet appealing modern romantic lead. She appeared in two critically successful films in 2004: A Very Long Engagement, where Cotillard further demonstrated the range of her abilities by playing the murderous Tina Lombardi (garnering the César Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role), and the drama mystery Innocence.
2005 saw Abel Ferrara offering her a small role alongside Forrest Whitaker (who would present her the Oscar two years later) in his religious movie Mary while she also played in Burnt Out, Fabienne Godet's study of social oppression and stresses of corporate culture.[3] In 2006, she appeared in Ridley Scott's A Good Year, Belgian comedy Dikkenek and learnt to play the cello for her role as a concertist in the satirical coming of age movie You and Me.[4]
She was chosen by director Olivier Dahan to portray the iconic French singer Édith Piaf in the biopic La Môme (English title: La Vie En Rose) before he had even met her, saying that in the eyes of Édith Piaf he noticed a similarity with Marion's own.[5]. Producer Alain Goldman accepted and defended the choice even though distributors TFM reduced the money they gave to finance the film thinking Cotillard wasn't "bankable" enough an actress. [6] Her portrayal was widely praised, including by the eminent theatre director Sir Trevor Nunn, who described it as "one of the greatest performances on film ever."[7] It was dubbed "the most awaited film of 2007" in France, where some critics said that she had reincarnated Édith Piaf to sing one last time on stage.[8]
On February 10, 2008, Cotillard became the first French actress to be awarded the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role since the BAFTAs in 1969 combined the Best British and Best Foreign actress award into one Best Actress category. She is also the first actress to be nominated for an Academy Award for a French language performance since Catherine Deneuve for Indochine in 1992. She is the first actress to win a Golden Globe for a foreign language performance since 1972, when Liv Ullmann won for The Emigrants. As La Vie En Rose was also a Czech production (as she mentioned in her César acceptance speech [9]), Marion Cotillard was nominated for the Czech Lion for "Best Actress in a Leading Role" on February 21.
On February 22, 2008 she was awarded the César Award for Best Actress, and two days later she received the Academy Award for Best Actress. After Simone Signoret in 1959, Marion Cotillard is the second French cinema actress to win an Academy Award for Best Actress, though French expatriate Claudette Colbert was given an Oscar in 1934. She is the first Best Actress winner in a non-English language performance since Sophia Loren's win in 1961. She is also the first and so far only winner of an Academy Award for a performance in the French language. In her Oscar acceptance speech, Cotillard proclaimed "thank you life, thank you love" (allegedly a reference to one of Piaf's songs) and, speaking of Los Angeles, said "it is true, there is some angels in this city!"
On March 1, 2008, Cotillard won the Czech film industry's highest acting honor, the Czech Lion Award for Best Actress. She could not attend the ceremony in Prague due to the filming of her next American film, Public Enemies. Her friend Pavlina Nemcova - who played the journalist in La vie en Rose - was there to accept the award on her behalf.
Cotillard has also been cast to play Luisa Contini in the film adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical Nine, alongside fellow Academy Award winner Javier Bardem, Academy Award nominee Penelope Cruz, and Academy Award winning Italian film legend Sophia Loren.[10] Coincidentally, Marion Cotillard and Sophia Loren are the only two actresses to ever win the Academy Award for Best Actress for foreign language performances.
Personal life
Cotillard was born in Paris and grew up around Orléans, Loiret in an artistically-inclined, "bustling, creative household".[4] Her father, Jean-Claude Cotillard, is an actor, teacher, former mime, and 2006 Molière Award-winning director of Breton descent [11] (his mother Léontine Cotillard still lives in Plémet, Brittany [12]) and her mother, Niseema Theillaud, is also an actress and drama teacher.[4] She has two younger twin brothers, Quentin and Guillaume. Quentin Cotillard is a sculptor and painter living in San Francisco, California[13] with his Irish-American wife, Elaine O'Malley Cotillard, "a former Dutch National Ballet dancer who grew up in Marin County and is now a San Francisco fashion designer".[14] Guillaume Cotillard is a writer.[15]
Cotillard is currently in a relationship with French actor/director Guillaume Canet, who was her acting partner in the 2003 French film Love Me If You Dare.[16] Cotillard is interested in environmental activism and has served as a spokesperson for Greenpeace allowing the organization to use her apartment to test products and being among the artists involved in "Desseins pour le climat" (Drawings for Climate), an album project that was released in 2005 and raised money for the environmental activist group. [17] She is a fan of Radiohead, of Canadian singer Hawksley Workman as well and she has appeared in two of his music videos, most notably "No Reason to Cry Out your Eyes (On the Highway Tonight)". [18] Workman even revealed in interviews about his last album Between The Beautifuls that he worked and wrote songs with Cotillard while they both were in Los Angeles during the movie awards season. [19]
Controversy
On February 29, 2008, the website of French magazine Marianne published quotes of an excerpt of a television interview dating back to February 16 2007,[20] in which she said:[21]
Cotillard: I have a tendency to often share the point of view of the conspiracy theory.
- Paris Dernière: Are you paranoid?
Cotillard: No, no, it's not a paranoid thing — because I think that we are told lies about lots of things.
- Paris Dernière: Yeah?
Cotillard: Coluche, 9/11, all that. We can watch on the Internet all the films that, well…about 9/11, about — about the conspiracy theory. It's fascinating. It's even addictive after a while.
- Paris Dernière: Let's take 9/11, for example. What did disturb [sic] you more concretely?
Cotillard: You are shown that other towers of the same kind that were hit by planes, that burnt — there is a tower, I think that it's in Spain, that burnt for twenty-four hours.
- Paris Dernière: Before collapsing…?
Cotillard: It never collapsed! None of these towers collapsed. And, over there, in a few minutes, the thing collapses. And, then, after that, we'll talk lengthily about it because there was — because the thing was filled with gold, the towers from 9/11. And then it was a money-sucker because they were finished, it seems to me, in '73, and to update all that, to modernize all the technology and everything, it was much more expensive to have work done, etc., than destroying them. Did man walk on the moon? I've seen quite a lot of documentaries about it, and I ask myself. But, in any case, I don’t believe everything that I'm told, that's for sure.
She made this statement during a long conversation with host Xavier de Moulins in which La Vie En Rose Oscar-winning make-up artist Didier Lavergne—a close friend of the late Coluche, the controversy over whose death was mentioned just before in the discussion—intervened as well[22] and it was edited into an approximately one hour show. At this particular moment, they were visiting the Catacombs, a famous underground ossuary, during a nocturnal walk in various places of Paris for Paris Dernière, a Paris by Night cultural television program.[23][24]
A few days later Cotillard allegedly released the statement: "My statements on that program have been taken completely out context and been crafted into a story that has no merit." She stressed her deep apologies regarding how her statements or their misunderstanding could have hurt any people. Her attorney, Vincent Tolesano, said that "Marion never intended to contest nor question the attacks of September 11, 2001; and regrets the way old remarks have been taken out of context."[25]
Filmography
| Year | Film | Role | Other notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1994 | L'Histoire du garçon qui voulait qu'on l'embrasse | Mathilde | Alternative title: The Story of a Boy Who Wanted to Be Kissed |
| 1996 | Comment je me suis disputé (ma vie sexuelle) | Student | Alternative title: My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument |
| La Belle Verte | Student | ||
| 1998 | Taxi | Lili Bertineau | |
| 1999 | La Guerre dans le Haut Pays | Julie Bonzon | Alternative title: War in the Highlands |
| Furia | Élia | ||
| Du Bleu jusqu'en Amérique | Solange | Alternative title: Blue Away to America | |
| 2000 | Taxi 2 | Lili Bertineau | |
| 2001 | Lisa | Young Lisa | |
| Les Jolies choses | Marie/Lucie | Alternative title: Pretty Things | |
| 2002 | Une affaire privée | Clarisse Entoven | Alternative title: A Private Affair |
| 2003 | Taxi 3 | Lili Bertineau | |
| Love Me If You Dare | Sophie Kowalsky | Alternative title: Jeux d'enfants | |
| Big Fish | Joséphine | ||
| 2004 | Innocence | Mademoiselle Éva | |
| A Very Long Engagement | Tina Lombardi | Alternative title: Un long dimanche de fiançailles | |
| 2005 | Cavalcade | Alizée | |
| Edy | Céline/La chanteuse du rêve | ||
| Ma vie en l'air | Alice | Alternative title: Love is in the air | |
| Mary | Gretchen Mol | ||
| Sauf le respect que je vous dois | Lisa | Alternative title: Burnt Out | |
| La Boîte noire | Isabelle Kruger/Alice | Alternative title: The Black Box | |
| 2006 | Toi et Moi | Léna | Alternative title: You And Me |
| Dikkenek | Nadine | ||
| Fair Play | Nicole | ||
| A Good Year | Fanny Chenal | ||
| 2007 | La môme | Édith Piaf | Alternative titles: La Vie en rose, Édith Piaf, Life in Pink, The Little Girl, The Passionate Life of Édith Piaf |
| 2009 | Public Enemies | Billie Frechette | Filming |
| Nine | Luisa Contini | Pre-Production |
Awards and nominations
| Year | Group | Award | Film | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | César Awards | Best Supporting Actress | A Very Long Engagement | Won |
| 2008 | César Awards | Best Actress | La Vie en Rose | Won |
| Academy Awards | Best Actress in a Leading Role | La Vie en Rose | Won | |
| BAFTA | Best Actress | La Vie en Rose | Won | |
| Boston Society of Film Critics | Best Actress | La Vie en Rose | Won | |
| Czech Lion | Best Actress in a Leading Role | La Vie en Rose | Won | |
| Golden Globe Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy | La Vie en Rose | Won | |
| Kansas City Film Critics | Best Actress | La Vie en Rose | Won | |
| Los Angeles Film Critics Awards | Best Actress | La Vie en Rose | Won |
| Year | Group | Award | Film | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | César Awards | Most Promising Actress | Taxi | Nominated |
| 2002 | César Awards | Most Promising Actress | Les Jolies Choses | Nominated |
| 2007 | Broadcast Film Critics Association | Best Actress in a Leading Role | La Vie en Rose | Nominated |
| Chicago Film Critics Association | Best Actress | La Vie en Rose | Nominated | |
| Dallas Fort-Worth Critics | Best Actress | La Vie en Rose | Nominated (2nd place) | |
| Detroit Society of Film Critics | Best Actress | La Vie en Rose | Nominated | |
| Detroit Society of Film Critics | Best Actress | La Vie en Rose | Nominated | |
| European Film Awards | European Best Actress | La Vie en Rose | Nominated | |
| National Board of Review | Best Actress | La Vie en Rose | Nominated (Runner-up) | |
| National Society of Film Critics | Best Actress | La Vie en Rose | Nominated (First Runner-up) | |
| Online Film Critics Society | Best Actress | La Vie en Rose | Nominated | |
| St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association | Best Actress | La Vie en Rose | Nominated | |
| 2008 | Richard Attenborough Award | Best Actress | La Vie en Rose | Nominated |
| Screen Actors Guild Award | Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role | La Vie en Rose | Nominated |
| Click "Show" for more awards ... |
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African American Film Critics Association
Boston Society of Film Critics
Cabourg Romantic Film Festival
Berlin International Film Festival
Conservatoire d'Orléans
Etoiles d'Or du Cinéma
Golden Star Award
Hollywood Film Festival
InterNational Online Cinema Awards
Kansas City Film Critics Circle
London Film Critics Circle Awards
National Society of Film Critics (First Runner Up, Best Actress)
NRJ Ciné Awards
Palm Springs International Film Festival
Prix Lumière
Santa Barbara International Film Festival
Seattle International Film Festival
Verona Love Screens Film Festival
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References
- ^ Bunbury, Stephanie (2007-07-15). "Birds of a feather". The Age.com.au. Retrieved 2007-07-14.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ Variety's synopsis of War In The Highlands http://www.variety.com/profiles/Film/synopsis/137729/La+Guerre+dans+le+Haut%2DPays.html?dataSet=1
- ^ 2005 London Film Festival Film Presentation http://lff2006.lff.org.uk/films_details.php?FilmID=629
- ^ a b c Gilbey, Ryan (2007-07-07). "Marion has no regrets either". News.com.au. Retrieved 2007-07-09.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ "Piaf star Cotillard's career blooms with Oscar nom for 'La Vie En Rose'". The Canadian Press. 2008-02-14. Retrieved 2008-03-06.
- ^ "Everything's coming up roses". Benjamin Sesher, Telegraph.co.uk. 2008-02-12.
- ^ "Who is: Marion Cotillard". Meryl Demiglio, Papierdoll Magazine. March 2008. Retrieved 2008-03-06.
- ^ "Les films qui vont cartonner en 2007". Amélie Charnay, 01Men.com. 2007-01-16.
- ^ Translation of her César acceptance speech http://marioncotillard.blogspot.com/2008/02/csar-awards-announced-today.html
- ^ "Everything's rosy for Cotillard". John McMurtrie, San Francisco Chronicle. 2008-02-17.
- ^ http://marion-cotillard.org/v/magazine-scans/2008/ParisMatch-F-February28/011.jpg.html Jean-Claude Cotillard speaking about his parents, Breton peasants
- ^ http://youtube.com/watch?v=X_PMxTe1T2o Reportage showing Marion in her grandmother's village
- ^ "Golden Globe's Best Actress Marion Cotillard: 'It Was Like Fireworks'". Foxnews.com. 2008-01-14.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "French Oscar nominee talks about her depiction of Edith Piaf". Marin Independant Journal. 2008-01-31.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Marion Cotillard's profile on Screenrush.co.uk http://www.screenrush.co.uk/personne/fichepersonne_gen_cpersonne=17367.html
- ^ Jason Solomons (2008-02-17). "BAFTA The couple's relationship is widely reported in the French press, and they have been dubbed the French version of "Brangelina." Despite this, many reports say the couple prefers to live a simple lifestyle, and they are often spotting in cafes and shopping together in Paris. trash". The Guardian.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Five facts about Marion Cotillard". Forbes.com. 2008-02-24.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ 2004 Music Video for Hawksley Workman's song "No reason to cry out your eyes" featuring Marion Cotillard http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tup7kMoCSrc
- ^ "Hawksley Workman always working". Jam.canoe.ca. 2008-02-15.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Magnifique Marion Cotillard • • Conspiracy theories
- ^ The complete transcript of the extract and its translation http://marion-cotillard.org/general/conspiracy-theories#more-315
- ^ Official webpage of the Paris Première TV show http://www.paris-premiere.fr/cms/display.jsp?id=p2_876019
- ^ Description of the tv show's concept http://marion-cotillard.org/forum/index.php?topic=26.msg99;boardseen#new
- ^ Video of the portion plus the end of Lavergne’s intervention before http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4l947_marion-cotillard-derape-sur-le-11-s_news
- ^ Lawyer: Marion Cotillard's Remarks Out of Context - Scandals & Feuds, Marion Cotillard : People.com
