Biography for
Isabelle Huppert

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Isabelle Huppert was born in 1953, in Paris, France, but spent her childhood in Ville d'Avray. Encouraged by her mother (who was a teacher of English), she followed the Conservatory of Versailles and won an acting prize for her work in Alfred de Musset's "Un caprice". She then studied at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique and followed an illustrious theatrical career, which includes Ivan Turgenev's "A Month in the Country", Euripides' "Medea" (title role) etc. She made her movie debut in 1971 and soon became one of the top actresses of her generation, giving fine performances in important films, like Claude Goretta's Dentellière, La (1977), as a simple-minded girl who falls in love with - and is betrayed by - a student, Jean-Luc Godard's Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980), as a prostitute, and Maurice Pialat's Loulou (1980), as an upper-class woman who is physically attracted by a young vagabond. She made her US debut playing a brothel madam in Michael Cimino's disastrous Heaven's Gate (1980) and has an extremely productive collaboration with Claude Chabrol, who cast her in several movies, including Violette Nozière (1978), in which she played a young woman who murders her parents, and Une affaire de femmes (1988), in which she gave an excellent performance as a shameless abortionist, the last woman to be executed in France. More recent good films include Patricia Mazuy's Saint-Cyr (2000) and Michael Haneke's controversial Pianiste, La (2001), as a sexually repressed piano teacher.

Sister of Elisabeth Huppert.

Saw the French team's victory at the Stade de France in the final of "XVI FIFA World Cup 1998" (1998) together with her son.

Being the youngest of five children, she three sisters and a brother: director Caroline Huppert, actress/writer/director Elisabeth Huppert, Jacqueline and Rémi.

Mother of 3 children: Lolita (born in October 1983), Lorenzo (born in January 1986) and Angelo (born in August 1997), all fathered by Ronald Chammah, who directed her in Milan noir (1987).

She is, by far, the actress who has had the most films (16) in the Cannes's official competition, and one of the four who have won the Best Interpretation Awards twice - for Violette Nozière (1978) in 1978 and Pianiste, La (2001) in 2001 (the others are Vanessa Redgrave for Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966) in 1966 and _Isadora (1968)_ in 1968, Helen Mirren for Cal (1984) in 1984 and The Madness of King George (1994) in 1995, and Barbara Hershey for Shy People (1987) in 1987 and A World Apart (1988) in 1988).

Most nominated actress for the Cesar Award. She has been nominated 13 times, and won once, for Cérémonie, La (1995). (2007).

Has recorded an album with French singer/"rock star" Jean-Louis Murat called "Madame Deshoulières". They sing/recite lyrics taken from poems of nearly unknown 16th century writer Antoinette Deshoulières. (Album released in France by "Labels" on 26 March 2001.)

Plays the piano.

Isabelle Huppert starred with her daughter Lolita Chammah in three films, Vie moderne, La (2000), Malina (1991) and Une affaire de femmes (1988).

During the shooting of 8 femmes (2002), Isabelle was always hungry at 5 P.M. and had to eat bread. As this made Danielle Darrieux also feel hungry, they shared their bread.

Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984.

Graduated from the CNSAD (National Conservatory of Dramatic Art of Paris)

Friend of Kim Cattrall.

Born to Raymond Huppert, an engineer, and his wife Annick, an English teacher.

Is interested in photography.

Her stage performance as "Hedda Gabler" in Ibsen's play was critically acclaimed and awarded at the Mostra in Venice (2005).

Auditioned for the Holly Hunter role in The Piano (1993).

Personal Quotes

Acting is a way of living out one's insanity.

A script, even it differs from filmmaker to filmmaker, never tells the whole story; there are always elements that need to be invented. As soon as one decides to take a role after having read the script, the various elements begin to fall into place. A character begins to take shape. And regardless of whether the information given is ample or not, it appears to one, strangely, as an apparition. From that moment, one knows whether or not this figure will be able to pass through one; if there is a meeting point.

Body language in the cinema is thus very particular. The screen can transmit an image very different of the body. In life, we see each other by facing each other. In the cinema, one is astonished to discover oneself from another angle. But at the same time there is no obligation to look. Serge Daney used to say that the work of actors is the make movies, and the work of the spectator is to look at them.

I think being actor is more difficult for men. The very best actors are not afraid of playing with their own femininity and leaving aside power struggles with the director. Because there's no getting around it: on a film set, it's the director who has the power. This fact is often more difficult to accept for an actor than for an actress.

I don't know if you ever say to yourself that you want to be an actress. It eventually becomes a social function - you are an actress and you make a living out of it, but at the beginning it's more a matter of how to survive, or how to exist in a certain way. I think being an actress is more how to cope with the fact that you can't do anything else than to express a talent. It's a way of being untalented for anything. To say, "I want to be an actress" is to say, "I can't do anything else, so let's try to be an actress.

I don't try to sympathise with my characters, I just try to empathise with them. To try to understand. If I sympathised with the characters I would make idealised, romantic characters out of them, which I don't do. I don't idealise them, I just do normal characters, not very sympathetic, but just the way they are. I think I do this in films that are made in the shape of a question, not in the shape of an answer. They just try to make a very open statement and it is down to anyone's subjectivity to find his own answer to that.

A great film is always a metaphor for the direction. A great director always says what he thinks of the cinema through his work, through a fictional story. It is always a reflection of what it is to be a director, what is a movie, what is an audience. It's always the same case. In the case of La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher), Michael Haneke talks about control and loss of control, and he was filming a woman who I felt was more identified with the situation of the director. This is a woman who controls her desire, exactly as a director controls his own desire and the audience's desire. In the film, the woman is not the object of desire, she is the one who wants to control her desire. That is why as a film - I'm not even talking about the story - as a film it is interesting because he has changed the status of an actress in a film. That is why the sexual scenes were easier for me to do because I am not set up in the usual situation of being an object of a man's desire, I am the one who controls the desire of the man. So I felt completely protected by this change of focus.

I don't believe one ever plays characters, one plays states of mind. A character is completely meaningless to me. One goes through states of mind and tries to link them together.

I don't think you work with Godard, you experience... Doing a movie with Godard - I have done two, which means I have spent almost two years with him - it's more like doing an incomparable experience. Just watching Godard - it's a gift for an actress to make films with him. When I say you don't work with Godard I mean that you don't go through any classical path where you build a character. With Godard it's degree zero - you don't do anything, it's a very strange feeling. And yet it is acting - it's very highly stylised and he's very directive. The reason is always very precise, there is never any improvisation. I think, finally, he manages to get everybody to talk like him. It's true! He always wants to close the sense at the end of a line. He closes the sense. It's very strange. You can't say, "I'm doing a Godard and I'm playing a prostitute," because Godard is so far away from any assembly of images you may have about that character. That's why he's a great director - more than a great director, a great thinker of cinema.

I have attempted to keep this constant link between the films and roles I choose to do and my own persona. That's why it's so difficult to choose what film to do, and the people I work with. It's like there is no division between doing a film and your own life. Making movies has so much to do with privacy, with intimacy. I think that in order to make a film I have to feel this potential, this possibility, of being private - more private and intimate than at home. It's not a public matter for me, being an actress - it's a really private matter. Most of the time that's what cinema is. It's public, it's private, and that's why movies create such an emotional impact. It's also very pragmatic. It's just work we're talking about. The rest belongs to me.

I never feel I am playing characters. I play certain states, certain ranges of emotions, certain feelings. The contours of a character are something very vague. Initially, when I read a script, I have certain pieces or images that come up to the surface. I guess the difference would be between abstract painting and figurative painting. An established character would be more like a figurative painting: you have to paint this room, you have to paint the curtains, and so on. I think it's more interesting to consider acting as non-figurative painting. As a canvas on to which you throw things. It can be a colour, it can be a rhythm, it can be music. And it's also a vision of yourself. When I read the script of Ma Mère, I thought it was very difficult to do. Because in principle it's a story about incest, even though it's much more than this. I hesitated a lot over whether I was going to do it, and I had this very fugitive impression of the role - for me it was like a flame. I saw this woman as a little bit of fire, being very unstable, rickety, not very steady on her feet. I had this vision of my body - sometimes that's enough.

It's just a desire to work. A desire and a need, like eating. An actress may see herself as more than a baker, but it's the same thing. I find it really hard to resist that desire. And it's true that that can result in some bad cakes - but that's never happened to me. I've never blushed at any of the films I've made. I've been very lucky.

About her performance as Euripides's Medea on stage: If one does theatre, it's to show human beings. They're not gods. In Euripides, that's clear. He was an avant-garde writer. Medea is a little like a Hitchcock film. The gods have decided what everybody knows, that's to say, her children are going to be killed. The spectator's attention works just the same way as in Hitchcock. The suspense consists in learning how she's going to kill her children. But it's Medea who decides herself to kill the children and she isn't directed by the gods. So there's every reason to make her a human figure.

About 'Funny Games', and Austrian director Michael Haneke: I didn't want to do it. The film was fascinating, but for an actress, it's just incredibly hard to play. I regretted my decision later because it's a really great film. But at the time, I just didn't have the courage to play in it. Later, he offered me a role in The Piano Teacher, partly, I suspect, as a challenge; he said to me: 'You'll see - it's worse than Funny Games !' I read the script and I thought it wasn't worse at all. But the scenario was in English, and perhaps there were some scenes I didn't really read properly.

Many people don't realize that it's in what you think are the limitations of a certain form that you can often find your own rhythm and space. I would never be able to do what I'm doing in a classical production, because in a classical staging, while you might think you're free, you're not. You're submitting to convention, to something totally arbitrary. In Claude Régy's production, it's the contrary: Because of the form, you can fly. I experienced this for the first time onstage with Bob Wilson. With him it's such a mathematical space, with such precise regulations, and yet I never felt so much myself.

My choice of roles while not entirely a choice - you have to select from what you are offered. If I seem detached or distant, it's because I think this is a more exact reproduction of life, where you hide as much as you show. When I see a scene in which feelings get loudly exteriorized, I say to myself, 'Well, at least this never happens to me.' I very rarely go through this type of expression. Most of the time things are hidden or at least much more subdued.

Salary

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