Charlotte rampling

Born on February 5, 1946 in Sturmer (Essex), Tessa Charlotte Rampling has as parents a painter who transmitted her love of art, and an Olympic medalist who later became a colonel in the army. When she was 9 years old, her father was sent to France, where her entire family moved. “I remember going to the Joan of Arc Academy for Girls in Versailles. I couldn’t speak French and there was no one to help us. For almost a year I sat in the class of a horrible teacher, not understanding anything at all.”

She had an older sister, Sarah, who committed suicide in Buenos Aires in 1966, which caused her great shock, as she was very close to her. Although her rigid parent forbade her from pursuing singing, fearing that she would become a failure of her own, she finally allowed her to start a modeling career when she was 17 years old.

She first appeared on the big screen, very briefly, as a water skier in Richard Lester ‘s The Knack…and How to Get It . Right after she was cast in one of the lead roles in Silvio Narizzano ‘s The Frolicking Spinster , where she was Lynn Redgrave ‘s roommate .

In the early stage of her career, Charlotte Rampling played a mercenary in the British series The Avengers , and the daughter of a colonial officer in the adventure film The Legend of a Brave Man . She soon gained enormous prestige, after playing the wife of a steel businessman forced to leave Germany, during the Nazi rise, in The Fall of the Gods , by maestro Luchino Visconti .

Over the years, Rampling has been known for choosing unconventional roles. He drew attention as a Holocaust survivor, who began a sadomasochistic relationship with his former Nazi jailer, in the controversial The Night Porter , by Liliana Cavani , in which he once again coincided with his co-star in the aforementioned Visconti film Dirk Bogarde . , who nicknamed the actress “The Look”. She was also the wife of a diplomat, who has a sexual relationship with a gorilla in Nagisa Oshima’s surreal Max My Love .

“My mother would have preferred for me roles in films like A Room with a View , and things like that,” the actress once commented. “But I never listened to him. I’d rather read a book than make a pretty movie.”

Over time, she has shot numerous titles, some from the period that her mother would have loved, as she was the aristocratic ancestor of Lady Di, mother of Keira Knightley , in The Duchess , and the aunt of the protagonist, Helena Bonham Carter , in The dove wings Her more conventional roles also include the sister of an expatriate American, in A mauve taxi , the biologist from Orca, the killer whale , the gypsy fortune teller with Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro , from Angel Heart , or the haunting teacher from an orphanage that is not what it seems in Never Let Me Go.

She does especially memorable work as the woman who betrays Paul Newman in Final Verdict . Woody Allen entrusted her with the role of the problematic ex-girlfriend of her character in the ‘Fellinian’ Memories .

In recent years, Rampling has become the fetish actress of the peculiar French filmmaker François Ozon , who offered her the leading role of Under the Sand , in which she was a teacher who disintegrates after the disappearance of her husband, and of Swimming Pool , where she plays a successful writer whose peace of mind is shattered by her publisher’s young daughter. Much later, the director turned to her for a short role with weight in the denouement of her, the wife of one of the clients of the young prostitute in the lead, in Young and Beautiful .

Although he usually shoots in France, where he continues to reside, he regularly participates in titles of various nationalities. She filmed in Spain Caótica Ana , by Julio Medem , where she was the patron of an alternative school for young artists.

In recent times, Charlotte Rampling has continued to do a little of everything. She has been a psychologist friend of the protagonist ( David Morrissey ), in the disastrous Basic Instinct 2: Addiction to Risk , the sister of a poet in Night Train to Lisbon , and a doctor in the series Dexter . She continues to be the muse of transgressive avant-garde directors, as she played Kirsten Dunst ‘s mother in Lars Von Trier ‘s Melancholia .

Divorced from actor and publicist Bryan Southcombe, she joined the famous composer Jean-Michel Jarre , with whom she also broke up, although reconciliation came after years. The actress had one child with each of them, the first of whom, Barnaby Southcombe , directed her in the 2012 thriller I, Anna . “I’ve always tried not to behave like a diva, and to put myself at the service of my directors. With my son I tried to do the same, let him manage me,” said the interpreter.