Eva Green

A rare example of an actress beginning her career well into adulthood, Eva Green's first feature-film role was the female lead in Bernardo Bertolucci's 2003 erotic drama The Dreamers, when she was 22. Green made quite an impression with her debut performance, working with a legendary director and appearing in so many nude and/or sexually explicit scenes that the film originally received an NC-17 rating. The young actress was praised for her tremendous presence onscreen, and the delicateness with which she portrayed both fierceness and vulnerability. Audiences, perhaps inescapably, also noted her exquisite beauty, as well as the ease with which she brought her own sensuality to the sexually charged film, never compromising her character in the process.

Achieving such exposure (so to speak) at the very beginning of her film career, Green was in no hurry to become a superstar. For her next role, she starred alongside Kristin Scott Thomas in the French adventure Arsene Lupin, a modest, low-profile project. Her next film, however, Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, was anticipated to be the big-budget blockbuster of its season. While Green's performance as Sybilla of Jerusalem was respectable, the film was panned by critics and audiences alike.

This hardly effected Green, who continued to take interest in whatever films appealed to her, rather than those that promised to advance her career. She signed on to take part in the fantasy film The Golden Compass, alongside the likes of Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, but before filming began for this niche adventure, she would appear with Craig in another film, and one much more mainstream. Taking the role of Bond girl Vesper Lynd in 2006's hotly anticipated Casino Royale, Green added tremendous vivacity to an effort that promised to breath new life into the James Bond franchise, as the film marked not only her first foray into the action genre, but the first film with Craig in the role of 007. As fans and critics speculated over whether the actor would be a good fit, only enthusiasm swelled around anticipation of Green's performance, as the actress's onscreen combination of intellect and sex appeal left little doubt about her capacity as a femme fatale.

~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide