Isabelle Huppert

Actor

Isabelle Huppert became one of France's busiest and most respected actresses in the late 20th century. She first gained fame in the 1974 sex farce Going Places as a ginger-haired teen seduced by Gerard Depardieu. (The film also jump-started Depardieu's career.) In 1978 she won the best actress award at Cannes for Violette Noziere, and she went on to make nearly five dozen more films before the year 2000. She has specialized in tales of emotionally repressed women: finding love and friendship with Miou-Miou in Entre Nous (1983), as a haunted abortionist in the controversial The Story of Women (1988), and as the erotically troubled tutor in The Piano Teacher (2001, based on the novel by Elfriede Jelinek) among others. Huppert has appeared rarely in American films, most notably in Heaven's Gate (1980) and as Steve Guttenberg's mistress in The Bedroom Window (1987).

Extra credit: She was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 1999... She has made many films with director Claude Chabrol.

Other French stars: Catherine Deneuve, Brigitte Bardot, Juliette Binoche and Marie Gillain.