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Marion Cotillard

Marion Cotillard (born September 30, 1975) is an Academy Award, BAFTA, two-time César Award, Czech Lion and Golden Globe winning French actress. She has acted in over fifty films in her native France and is affectionately called the "little French mermaid" by the public and the press. Cotillard won the Academy Award for Best Actress, BAFTA, Golden Globe, Czech Lion, and César Award for her career-making performance as the eternal French chanteuse Édith Piaf in La Vie En Rose.

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-wrote.

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 Juliette Binoche received an Oscar for Supporting Actress in 1997. 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" 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.

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, 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 [11] 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".[12] Guillaume Cotillard is a writer. [13]

Cotillard is currently dating French actor/director Guillaume Canet, who was her acting partner in the 2003 French film Love Me If You Dare.[14] 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. [15] 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)". [16] 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. [17]