Melanie Laurent

This Parisian actress came into the world on February 21, 1983. Since she was little, she was raised in an artistic environment, since her father is a French dubbing actor , known for voicing the character of Ned Flanders in The Simpsons in its French version. , and her mother is a dance teacher. And although Mélanie never had in mind to follow the same path as her parents, in 1998 the opportunity arose when she met the French actor Gérard Depardieu , who proposed her first role in the film A Bridge Between Two Rivers (1999), co-directed by the actor.

Among Mélanie Laurent’s early works are the French films Ceci est mon corps (2001), Snowboarder (2003), Une vie à t’attendre (2004) and The Last Day (2004), among others. In 2002, she gained a lot of fame thanks to her role as the girlfriend of the protagonist Gaspard Ulliel in Michel Blanc ‘s film Kiss Whoever They Want . She was also the winner of a César Award in 2007, thanks to her performance in the film Je vais bien, ne t’ en fais pas (2006), in the category of Best Female Revelation and Emerging Actress. In this drama, she gives life to a young woman with anorexia problems.

Her leap to international popularity came from the great director Quentin Tarantino , who chose the actress to be Shosanna Dreyfus in the successful Inglourious Basterds (2009), a film set in World War II, and in which she shared credits with actors of the caliber of Brad Pitt and Diane Kruger . She got rave reviews for her role. In addition, the actress confessed that “Killing” Hitler in Tarantino’s film was something personally very symbolic since she herself is Jewish and even her grandfather was deported to Auschwitz. Another film in which she remarkably succeeded was The Concert (2009), directed by Radu Mihaileanu ., a film in which indirectly the injustices against the Jewish community are also denounced .

Other notable titles in Mélanie Laurent’s filmography are Beginners (2010), a dramatic comedy with Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer ; Night Train to Lisbon  (2013), an adaptation of the novel by Pascal Mercier ; and Now You See Me… (2013), a Hollywood production where she plays an Interpol detective and shares the screen with Morgan Freeman , Michael Caine and Isla Fisher , among others.

Among his latest works, Enemy  (2013) stands out, a drama based on the novel by Jos é Saramago “The duplicate man”. The actress herself stated that she accepted the role without reading the script, just because she loved it.the previous film by director Denis Villeneuve . The same year, already pregnant with her first child, Mélanie she played a journalist in Don’t Cry, Fly  (2013). And two years later she had a role in Frente al mar , about a marital crisis, a film directed by Angelina Jolie that was not well received at the box office.

Mélanie Laurent is also a director and screenwriter, and although her filmography in this sense is not very extensive, the dramas Les adoptés (2013) and Breathe (2014), and the documentary Mañana (2015) are a must. In addition, in 2011 she began in the field of music and published her first album, “En t’attendant”, together with the Irish singer Denis Ménochet. It is clear that she is a versatile woman.