Chiara Mastroianni

The daughter of Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni and French actress Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni was born in Paris in the early '70s. She earned a César award nomination for her first feature film appearance in André Téchiné's My Favorite Season (1993), starring her mother in the lead role. The next year she appeared with her father in Robert Altman's ensemble comedy Prêt-à-Porter (aka Ready to Wear). Her first starring role came in 1995, opposite Melvil Paupaud in Le Journal d'un Seducteur, a romantic comedy inspired by "The Seducer's Diary" chapter from Soren Kierkegaard's first major text Either/Or. She worked with Paupaud again in Three Lives and Only One Death, playing a daughter to her real-life father in one of his last films, and in Time Regained, also starring her mother. Along with a few supporting performances in French films, she appeared in Gregg Araki's Nowhere and took time off to have her first child with sculptor Pierre Torreton. She returned to filmmaking to star in the leading role of Manoel de Oliveira's The Letter (A Carta), based on the novel La Princesse de Clèves by Madame de La Fayette. After appearances in Mike Figgis' Hotel and shooting in Italy for Le Parole di Mio Padre, she played the lead in Delphine Gleize's interconnected drama Carnages, a winner at several international festivals. In 2002, she married the incredibly attractive electronica musician Benjamin Biolay, had her second child, and starred in the comedy drama Il Est Plus Facile Pour un Chameau....

~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide