Isabelle Adjani is a French film actress and singer. She is a five-time César Award winner
and two-time Academy Award nominee. Adjani rose to fame in 1975 for her lauded
performance as Adele Hugo in The Story of Adele H., which earned the then 20 year-old
her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, making her the youngest nominee ever
at the time. She won the first of a record five César Awards for Best Actress for the
1981 film Possession. Her subsequent wins were for One Deadly Summer, Camille Claudel,
La Reine Margot and Skirt Day. Her 1988 Best Actress Academy Award nomination for Camille
Claudel, made her the first French actress to receive two nominations.
Adjani won the 1981 Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award for both Possession and Quartet,
and received the 1989 Berlin Film Festival Best Actress Award for Camille Claudel. In
2010, she was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur.
Early life Isabelle Yasmine Adjani was born in the 17th
arrondissement of Paris to a German Catholic mother from Bavaria and an Algerian Muslim
father from Iferhounène, Kabylie. Her mother Augusta, called "Gusti", met her father Mohammed
Adjani near the end of World War II, when he was in the French Army. They married and
she returned with him to Paris, not speaking a word of French.
She asked him to take Cherif as his first name as it sounded more "American". Mohammed
Cherif Adjani was a soldier in the French Army from the age of 16 in World War II.
Isabelle Adjani grew up bilingual, speaking French and German fluently. She said her parents
used their ethnic and cultural differences against each other in arguments. After winning
a school recitation contest, Adjani began acting by the age of twelve in amateur theater.
Career At the age of 14, Adjani starred in her first
motion picture, Le Petit bougnat. Adjani first gained fame as a classical actress
at the Comédie française, which she joined in 1972. She was praised for her interpretation
of Agnès, the main female role in Molière's L'École des femmes. She soon left the theatre
to pursue a film career. After minor roles in several films, she enjoyed
modest success in the 1974 film La Gifle (fr). The following year, she landed her first major
role in François Truffaut's The Story of Adèle H.. Critics praised her performance,
with the American critic Pauline Kael describing her acting talents as "prodigious". Only nineteen
when she made the film, Adjani was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar and quickly received
offers for roles in Hollywood films, such as Walter Hill's 1978 crime thriller The Driver.
She played Lucy in the German director Werner Herzog's 1979 remake of Nosferatu.
In 1981, Adjani received a double Cannes Film Festival's best actress award for her roles
in the Merchant Ivory film Quartet, based on the novel by Jean Rhys, and in the horror
film Possession. The following year, she received her first César Award for Possession, in
which she had portrayed a woman having a nervous breakdown. In 1983, she won her second César
for her depiction of a vengeful woman in the French blockbuster One Deadly Summer.
That same year, Adjani released the French pop album Pull marine, written and produced
by Serge Gainsbourg. She starred in a music video for the hit title song, "Pull Marine",
which was directed by Luc Besson. In 1988, she co-produced and starred in a
biopic of the sculptor Camille Claudel. She received her third César and second Oscar
nomination for her role in the film, which was also nominated for an Academy Award for
Best Foreign Language Film. Following this recognition, she was chosen by People magazine
as one of the "50 Most Beautiful People" in the world.
She received her fourth César for the 1994 film Queen Margot, an ensemble epic directed
by Patrice Chéreau. She received her fifth César for Skirt Day, the most that any actress
has received. The film features her as a middle school teacher in a troubled French suburb
who takes her class hostage when she accidentally fires off a gun she found on one of her students.
It was premiered on the French Arte channel on 20 March 2009, attaining a record 2.2 million
viewers) and then in movie theaters on 25 March 2009.
In 2011, Adjani was named "The Most Beautiful Woman in Film" by the Los Angeles Times magazine.
Personal life
In 1979, she had a son, Barnabe Nuytten, with the cinematographer Bruno Nuytten. Adjani
was romantically linked to the actor Warren Beatty from 1986 to 1987. From 1989 to 1995,
she had a relationship with Daniel Day Lewis, who left before the birth of their son, Gabriel-Kane
Day-Lewis, in 1995. Adjani was later engaged to the composer Jean
Michel Jarre; they broke up in 2004. In 2009, Adjani criticized statements by Pope
Benedict XVI claiming that condoms are not an effective method of AIDS prevention.
Honors In addition to specific awards for particular
films, Adjani was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur on 14 July 2010 for her artistic
contributions. Filmography
Discography Pull marine
References
Further reading Adjani, Isabelle. Isabelle Adjani in : Jean-Luc
Douin: Comédiennes aujourd'hui : au micro et sous le regard. Paris: Lherminier. ISBN
2-86244-020-5 Austin, Guy. Foreign bodies: Jean Seberg and
Isabelle Adjani, S. 91–106 in: ders., Stars in Modern French Film. Londres: Arnold. ISBN
0-340-76019-2 Austin, Guy. Telling the truth can be a dangerous
business : Isabelle Adjani, race and stardom, in : Remapping World Cinema : Identity,
Culture and Politics in Film, herausgegeben von Stephanie Dennison und Song Hwee Lim,
London: Wallflower Press. ISBN 1-904764-62-2 Halberstadt, Michèle. Adjani aux pieds nus –
Journal de la repentie. Paris: Editions Calmann-Lévy. ISBN 2-7021-3293-6
Roques-Briscard, Christian. La passion d'Adjani, Lausanne et al.: Favre. ISBN 2-8289-0279-X
Zurhorst, Meinolf. Isabelle Adjani. Ihre Filme – Ihr Leben. Heyne Film – und Fernsehbibliothek,
Band 163. München: Heyne. ISBN 3-453-05238-2 External links
Isabelle Adjani at the Internet Movie Database Isabelle Adjani at AllMovie