French actress Isabelle Huppert turns 70

She has appeared in around 150 film and TV productions, displaying her versatility across a wide range of characters. Although she has also acted in comedies, Isabelle Huppert is arguably best known for portraying cold women who behave in unexpected ways.

In her long career, she has appeared in front of the camera for many of cinema’s great masters. Some critics praise her as “one of the best actresses in the world”. At the 72nd Berlin Film Festival in 2022, her achievement was duly honored: she received the Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement.

Now in her 70s, she is still making movies. Her latest film, “Mon Crime”, a tragicomedy by filmmaker François Ozon, is showing in French cinemas.

Encouraged by her mother to start acting

Huppert was born to success in Paris on March 16, 1953. His parents – an English-teaching mother and a businessman father – were well-to-do. Although her father was of Jewish heritage, Isabelle and her four older siblings received a Catholic upbringing. Visual arts had a natural place in her home.

Huppert began attending her first acting classes at age 14 and was later admitted to the Conservatoire National Superieur d’Art Dramatique in Paris.

At 18, she was in her first movie. By age 23, she had become an international movie star.

Despite achieving stardom early in her career, she would never say she was lucky. “Luck doesn’t miraculously fall from the sky”, she once said in an interview with the women’s magazine “Brigitte”. She believes that everyone can create the conditions for her happiness.

Huppert, the intellectual?

Huppert is relentless and seems to continue to create the conditions he likes. She has a sizable body of work and has been starring in two to three movies a year for decades. Five titles are listed for release in 2022.

Its hallmarks are extraordinary women scarred by tragedy and surrounded by mystery.

Her choice of roles and collaborations with some of the world’s most renowned directors, such as Michael Haneke (“The Piano Teacher”) and Claude Chabrol (“Violette Noziere”), have earned her a reputation as an “intellectual actress.”

However, this is inaccurate, she said in an interview with “Zeit Magazine”, because her films – even if they can be seen as intellectual – say nothing about her. She sees herself as a “tool” of the directors, following her instructions exactly, with almost no improvisation.

Strong characters through minimal gestures

Huppert expresses his characters’ moods and states of mind with precision and great sensitivity. Her seemingly expressionless face and subdued facial expressions have become something of a trademark.

Fiction tends to inflate things, she told The Financial Times in July 2017. “But when I look at people on the street, I find most of them have pretty empty eyes. I have to do even less,” she said. . To observe, she was taught, you have to take away, not add something.

But his reductionist acting style meant that audiences and critics often saw Huppert as unapproachable, cold. An image that does not do justice to the French one, which is only 1.5 meters high.

She has been in a relationship with writer, producer and director Ronald Chammah since 1982; the couple has three children.

Art and photography are among Huppert’s passions. In her home, she collects pictures and books. “I want to hold on to the positive memories in my life,” she said.

Women on the margins of society gain a voice

Huppert has appeared in around 140 films since 1972.

She found herself working repeatedly with a few directors: Haneke, Paul Verhoeven, the late Chabrol and Bob Wilson.

Working with them, she can inhabit extreme characters – “survivors who can be victims and rebels simultaneously”, the actor once said. “My films give these women a voice. Because even though they live on the fringes of society, they are there: women who live brutal lives. It’s a brutality they themselves never sought,” Huppert told “Zeit Magazine”.

His performances in these challenging roles have earned him numerous awards, including the most important in the film industry: the French Cesar, the European Film Award, the Berlin Silver Bear, the Cannes Best Actor Award and the Golden Globe. Statues decorate the Huppert house. The only thing missing is the Oscar, an award for which she was nominated for the first time with “Elle” (2017), by Verhoeven.

absolute trust

About her acting capabilities, she said that she has “boundless self-confidence”.

“I never doubt it. I have absolutely no fear,” she told The Financial Times. “There are so many other areas where I’m not that… Crossing the street, meeting people… Everything vital. But acting, nothing can intimidate me. Acting is never an obstacle. I do it without thinking. It’s like eating or drinking”.

Now, as she is crowned in Berlin with a lifetime of continued success, one wonders: what else can Huppert hope to accomplish?

As she told “Brigitte” magazine, she sometimes feels “this light meaningless phase of lazy exhaustion”, although if she quit, she wouldn’t know who to hand her resignation to. She sometimes fantasizes about what she would do instead. “Clearly, however, I am against this daydream.”

Update: This Isabelle Huppert profile was originally written in German and updated on March 16, 2023 to celebrate the actor’s 70th birthday.