Élodie Bouchez

A gifted actress of dark-eyed, gamine beauty, Élodie Bouchez is one of the new young French cinema's most celebrated and prolific performers. She has made her name playing a series of intelligent, often wayward young women, characters she imbues with equal parts soul and complexity.

Born in Tunis, Tunisia on April 5, 1973, Bouchez became a child model at the age of 13. She made her film debut in Serge Gainsbourg's Stan the Flasher (1990) and went on to combine her acting pursuits with her school work; she also trained as a dancer, something she funded with baby-sitting money. Bouchez's acting career was floundering when, in 1994, she won the starring role of Maïté in André Téchiné's Les Roseaux Sauvages. A critically praised coming-of-age film, it allowed Bouchez to demonstrate her considerable talents as an actress, to the extent that she won the Most Promising Actress César for her work.

The acclaim surrounding her performance in Les Roseaux Sauvages brought Bouchez numerous offers to work with a variety of directors, but early on she demonstrated a preference for working with young filmmakers. In 1994, the same year she starred in Les Roseaux, Bouchez appeared in the ensemble drama Le Péril Jeune, directed by rising young director Cédric Klapisch. She also collaborated with new director Gael Morel, with whom she had starred in Les Roseaux, playing a university student in his drama À Toute Vitesse (1996).

In 1998, Bouchez earned great acclaim for her work with another up and coming director, Erik Zonca, in his directorial debut La via rêvée des anges. Starring alongside the equally remarkable Natacha Régnier, she played Isa, a wise, free-spirited young itinerant who enters into a tumultuous friendship with the unstable Marie (Régnier). Bouchez and Régnier shared that year's Cannes Best Actress Award for their performances; the honor was followed by a European Film Award (also shared with Régnier) and the 1999 Best Actress César for Bouchez.

The same year that she won the Best Actress César, Bouchez continued to collaborate with some of her country's most promising young talents, co-starring with Morel in Zonzon, a comedy-drama set in prison, and playing a bisexual thief in his made-for-TV Premières neiges. She also starred as a shop assistant in love with a Yugoslavian immigrant in Lovers, the directorial debut of actor Jean-Marc Barr.

~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide