Isabelle Huppert
Isabelle Anne Madeleine Huppert (French: [izabɛl ypɛʁ]; born 16 March 1953) is a French actress. Known for her portrayals of cold, austere women devoid of morality, she is considered one of the greatest actresses of her generation. With 16 nominations and two wins, Huppert is the most nominated actress at the César Awards. She is also the recipient of several accolades, including five Lumières Awards, a BAFTA Award, three European Film Awards, two Berlin International Film Festival, three Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival honors, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award nomination. In 2020, The New York Times ranked her second on its list of the greatest actresses of the 21st century.[1]
Isabelle Huppert
16 March 1953
Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Versailles
Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO)
Conservatoire national supérieur d'art dramatique (CNSAD)
Actress
1971–present
Ronald Chammah (1982–present)
3, including Lolita Chammah
Caroline Huppert (sister)
Huppert's first César Award nomination was for Best Supporting Actress in Aloïse (1975) and she won Best Actress for La Cérémonie (1995) and Elle (2016). For The Lacemaker (1977) she won the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer. She went on to win two Cannes Film Festival Awards for Best Actress for Violette Nozière (1978) and The Piano Teacher (2001) as well as the Volpi Cup for Best Actress twice for Story of Women (1988) and La Cérémonie. Huppert's other films in France include Loulou (1980), La Séparation (1994), 8 Women (2002), Gabrielle (2005), Amour (2012), Things to Come (2016), and Happy End (2017).
For her performance in Elle, Huppert was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress; she also won several critics awards as well as a Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award. Huppert is among international cinema's most prolific actresses with her best known English-language films including Heaven's Gate (1980), The Bedroom Window (1987), I Heart Huckabees (2004), The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2013), Louder Than Bombs (2015), Greta (2018), Frankie (2019), and Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022).
Also a prolific stage actress, Huppert is the most nominated actress for the Molière Award, with nine nominations; she received an honorary award in 2017. In the same year she was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize.[2] She made her London stage debut in the title role of the play Mary Stuart in 1996, and her New York stage debut in a 2005 production of 4.48 Psychosis. Huppert's recent credits include in Heiner Müller's Quartett (2009) in New York, Sydney Theater Company's The Maids (2014) and in Florian Zeller's The Mother (2019) in New York.
Early life and education[edit]
Huppert was born on 16 March 1953,[a] in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, the daughter of Annick (née Beau; 1914–1990), an English language teacher, and Raymond Huppert (1914–2003), a safe manufacturer. The youngest child, she has a brother and three sisters, including filmmaker Caroline Huppert. She was raised in Ville-d'Avray.[4] Her father was Hungarian-Jewish;[5][6][7] his family was from Eperjes, Kingdom of Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Prešov, Slovakia) and Alsace-Lorraine.[8][9] Huppert was raised in her mother's Catholic faith.[10][11] On her mother's side, she is a great-granddaughter of one of the Callot Soeurs.[12]
Huppert was encouraged by her mother to begin acting at a young age, and became a teenage star in Paris. She later attended Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Versailles, where she won a prize for her acting. She is also an alumna of the Conservatoire national supérieur d'art dramatique (CNSAD).[13]
Career[edit]
1970s[edit]
Huppert made her television debut in 1971 with Le Prussien, and her feature film debut in Nina Companeez's romantic comedy Faustine et le Bel Été (1972). The film was shown Out of Competition at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. Also that year she played Annie Smith in Alain Levent's adventure film The Bar at the Crossing and Marite in Claude Sautet's romance drama César and Rosalie with the former premiering at the Berlin International Film Festival. She made her theatre debut playing Lucile in Les Précieuses ridicules at the Comédie-Française in Paris from 1971 to 1972. Later that year she acted in A Hunger Artist at National Theatre Daniel Sorano in Paris followed by a run at the Shiraz Arts Festival.
In 1974 she acted in Alain Robbe-Grillet's art film Successive Slidings of Pleasure and Rachel Weinberg's fantasy film L'Ampélopède. She also gained notoriety for her later appearance as Suzanne in Bertrand Blier's controversial sex comedy Les Valseuses (1974). Huppert acted alongside Gérard Depardieu and Jeanne Moreau. Vincent Canby of The New York Times panned the film writing, "It's not very invigorating to see so much talent squandered on such foolish mixed-up romanticism."[14] The role made her increasingly recognized by the public.
The following year she acted in Yves Boisset's drama The Common Man (1975) which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. That same year starred in the American action thriller Rosebud (1975) directed by Otto Preminger. She acted opposite Peter O'Toole and Richard Attenborough. She also starred in the title role in the drama film Aloïse which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1976 she acted in Bertrand Tavernier's The Judge and the Assassin and Christine Lipinska's I Am Pierre Riviere.
Her international breakthrough came with her performance in Claude Goretta's La Dentelliere (1977),[15] for which she won a BAFTA award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles. Critic Roger Ebert praised her performance writing, "The movie’s performances are wonderfully subtle. Huppert, as Pomme, is good at the very difficult task of projecting the inner feelings of a character whose whole personality is based on the concealment of feeling".[16] The following year she won acclaim playing the title role Claude Chabrol's crime drama Violette Nozière (1978) winning the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress. It was the first of seven collaborations she would have with director Chabrol. Ebert wrote, "Huppert's performance, which is so assured, so complex it's hard to believe she worked this transformation in character after The Lacemaker.[17]
1980s[edit]
She made her American film debut in Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate (1980), which opened to poor reviews and was a box office failure; decades later, the film has been reassessed, with some critics considering it an overlooked masterpiece.[18] Also that year she starred in Maurice Pialat's Loulou (1980) where she reunited with Gérard Depardieu. Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised her performance writing, "Miss Huppert does a fine job of seeming exotic, vague, dazzling and also, somehow, unremarkable - all of this at the same time. The performances are much sharper than the film is as a whole."[19] Also in 1980 she acted in Jean-Luc Godard's Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980).
Throughout the 1980s, Huppert continued to explore enigmatic and emotionally distant characters, most notably in Diane Kurys' Coup de foudre (1983) directed by Bertrand Tavernier. The film was adapted from Jim Thompson's pulp novel Pop. 1280. Huppert earned a César Award for Best Actress nomination for her performance. She acted in Curtis Hanson's neo-noir thriller The Bedroom Window (1987) acting opposite Steve Guttenberg and Elizabeth McGovern.[20] She won acclaim for her role in Claude Chabrol's Une Affaire de Femmes (1988).
1990s[edit]
In 1994, Huppert collaborated with American director Hal Hartley on Amateur, one of her few English-language performances since Heaven's Gate. She won acclaim for her role in La Séparation (1994) with David Parkinson of British Film Institute writing, "Her distinctive talent for suppressing suffering is readily evident in Christian Vincent’s excruciating study of her slowly disintegrating relationship with Daniel Auteuil, as Huppert imparts chilling intimacy to a withdrawn hand, an unanswering gaze, a treacherous silence and a careless word in conveying the pain of falling out of love."[21] She portrayed a manic and homicidal post-office worker in Claude Chabrol's La Cérémonie (1995) for which she won the César Award for Best Actress and the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. Huppert continued her cinematic relationship with Chabrol in Rien ne va plus (1997) and Merci pour le Chocolat (2000).
Personal life[edit]
Huppert lived with producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier for several years.[4][45][46] She has been in a relationship with writer, producer and director Ronald Chammah since about 1982.[47] They have three children, including the actress Lolita Chammah, with whom she acted in five films, including Copacabana (2010) and Barrage (2017).[48][49] She has never married.
Huppert is the owner of the repertory cinemas Christine Cinéma Club and Ecoles Cinéma Club in Paris, which her son Lorenzo curates.[50][51]