Marion Cotillard - Biography

Out on his own, Cotillard would create and tour with a series of one-man shows, then he'd form the Cotillard Company for which he would write, direct and perform. The company would specialise in shows for children, but also branch out into adult satire and drama. Sido and Sacha, Occupe Toi De Moi, Le Pieds Dans La Confiture, Le Regard D'Antoine and Trekking were just some of the plays they performed over the years. Another was A Very Nice Party, adapted from Roland Barthes' Fragments D'Un Discours Amoureux. Prophetically perhaps, there was yet another called La Vie En Rose.

Cotillard was aided in his itinerant career by the fact that his wife was also an actress and a member of the company. She was Monique Theillaud (later known as Niseema) and was born and raised in Val-de-Marne, attending school at Bonneuil-sur-Marne and Charenton between 1958 and 1969, then attending the college St Exupery at Creteil. Monique would become an actress (and later a drama teacher) and would meet Jean-Claude Cotillard in the vibrant theatrical world of southern Paris. Quickly she'd enter his renowned burlesque universe, joining a company famed for being inventive, ironic, silly and skilful in its satirical use of mime, dance and theatre. Comic cartoons and silent movies were a huge influence, all their characters were wildly excessive.

This was the life into which Marion was born, and quickly she'd be drawn into the family's dramatic tradition. Making her stage debut at the age of three, she'd play a little girl whose mother at one point lies dead before her. In rehearsal they kept telling her that the prone actress was her mum, but the notion baffled and disturbed her, all the more so because her real mother was standing there on stage, as another character. It wouldn't take her long to get the gist of this acting lark, though. Some two years later she'd be placed in a friend of the family's TV movie and would understand that the dog she owned in the film was hers only in the film. By then she'd had plenty of experience with her father's company, and this would continue through her youth as, joined by her brothers and her older cousin Laurent, she'd star in many of the company's shows for children.

Until the age of 10, Marion would live at the top of a tower block in Alfortville, a neighbourhood of Val-de-Marne. It was a noisy but loving home, where the kids were allowed to draw and paint on the walls and Jean-Claude and Monique would tell them a different fairy story every day, allowing the kids to join in the performance. Thus their imaginations were fired at a very early age. There'd be further input from Jean-Claude who, often touring the world with his company, would send his children long letters from exotic climes and bring back exciting presents, like ponchos from Peru.

All this should have led young Marion to become outgoing, yet outside factors ensured that, for now, she was not. Spending much of her time with two close friends she was badly hurt when they closed ranks on her, using her as a scapegoat and attacking her. This damaged her confidence and she received a further set-back when the family left Paris so her parents could take work teaching at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique in Orleans. Living in a small village outside the town, in the agricultural region of La Beauce, life was very different. Marion had felt the whole world passed through their block in Alfortville, from artists to gang-bangers, their existence had been truly multi-racial and cosmopolitan. Now things were different. At her new school she befriended a Moroccan and was punished for her racial faux pas. Trapped in a stairwell, she had a litre of eau de cologne poured over her head, to "disinfect" her. Consequently, Marion became more withdrawn. She lost her trust in people, hated herself for her own lack of character and, up until the age of 15, found comfort in her family, with their black humour and dirty joke competitions, and in music. She was a big pop fan, at 12 having gone to see Madonna at the Parc de Sceaux, joining a then record crowd of 130,000.

Eventually it would be music and her family that set her right again. At the age of 14 she'd score a part in the video for Petite Fille, the latest single by Les Wampas, known as psychobilly punks but, being French, they were more powerpop. In the vid, cyclist Cotillard would be kidnapped by a fat man, then bandaged all over, mummy-style, and be about to suffer some mysterious though surely hideous operation when she's rescued by lead singer Didier Wampas. Taken from the band's third album, Les Wampas Vous Aiment, the song and video would gain wide exposure, though the group would suffer a terrible set-back the very next year (1991) when guitarist Marc Police would commit suicide. Having been taught the rudiments of acting by her mother, then the basics of getting in touch with and manipulating her inner feelings by her father, Marion now realised that acting was her vocation. Having attended the Lycee Voltaire at Orleans-la-Source, about 10 km south of the city centre, she pushed for a place at the Conservatoire and was duly accepted, the youngest student ever to enrol there.

It was hard work and, despite the fact that her father had launched the theatre department, no favours were asked or done.

Cotillard would furthermore begin the process of auditioning for work, at 17 being sent by her agent to try out for Jean-Claude Brisseau's L'Ange Noir. Infamously, this would lead to her being interviewed by the police when they were gathering evidence for Brisseau's 2005 trial for harassment when several actresses claimed they were pushed to perform sex acts before him during auditions (and that he had, in turn, masturbated in front of them). Also interviewed would be Helen de Fougerolles, Cotillard's co-star in Innocence. Both had been turned down for a part by Brisseau and were said to have not suffered at his hands. Brisseau himself claimed that these auditions had been a minutely prepared artistic attempt to document the nature of feminine sexual pleasure and, indeed, L'Ange Noir, starring Sylvie Vartan. Michel Piccoli and Tcheky Karyo, did concern pornography, sex, power and hypocrisy, and would feature a scene in which a woman masturbated in front of her lover while he taped her and quoted from Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar. It would also be chosen for the front cover of the renowned film magazine Cahiers Du Cinema. However, the mother of Vanessa Paradis would give evidence claiming that back in 1989 Brisseau had asked her daughter, then 17, to masturbate for him in auditions for his movie White Wedding.  Brisseau would be handed a suspended one-year prison sentence, just two years after his Secret Things had won a French Culture award at Cannes.

Cotillard's first success at audition would bring her a part in an episode of the first series of Highlander, a TV spin-off from the Christophe Lambert movie. Directed by Dennis Berry, the episode would see Jason Riddington, son of diplomat Anthony Head, rape young Marion, the step-daughter of one of the immortals. To see justice done, Highlander Adrian Paul must protect the criminal and his family from vigilante attack.

In June, 1994, Cotillard would emerge from the Conservatoire with the top prize for acting and a Diplome D'Art Dramatique, and immediately move to Paris. Her first reaction to living in the city would be one of rage. Now well-used to village life in La Beauce she was horrified by people's casual attitude to waste and rubbish on the streets. She would publicly confront litter-bugs, demanding that they clean up after themselves. It was the start of a long journey, Cotillard eventually using her fame and status to vociferously promote Greenpeace and other eco-projects.

Cotillard's next on-screen appearance would be a bit-part film debut in L'Histoire D'Un Garcon Qui Voulait Qu'On L'Embrasse, a melancholy romantic drama where History of Art student Julien Collet is lonely in Paris and becomes obsessed with being kissed, seeking a snog at parties, amongst old friends and in everyday situations. Then she'd score parts in two episodes of Extreme Limite, a sort of French Beverly Hills 90210 where good-looking kids at an elite sports academy faced the usual teenage problems with sex, drugs and love. Moving into 1995, she'd appear in the Franco-Belgian short Snuff Movie,directed by Olivier Van Hoofstadt, and in  Eric Woreth's 6-minute Etude Sur Le Mouvement (2), where a man would be questioned by an electric fairy, the short being shown at the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival. Then would come Theo La Tendresse, where veteran journalist Gerard Rinaldi must deal with a new, young, smart-arsed female colleague while also coping with his paralyzed son and 18-year-old daughter. There'd be further exposure in the tacky but reasonably witty observational comedy Comment Je Me Suis Dispute . . . (Ma Vie Sexuelle), where mature student Mathieu Amalric kept three girlfriends and several other possibilities on the go, failing to commit to any of them. Amalric would win a Cesar for his efforts, with the movie being nominated for the Palme D'Or at Cannes.

Tremendously ambitious in her search for testing work, Cotillard was constantly encouraged by her parents, and by her cousin Laurent, who'd recently appeared in Hamlet at the Comedie Francaise.  Aside from Ma Vie Sexuelle, 1996 would see her in the creative eco-comedy La Belle Verte, written and directed by Coline Serreau, who'd created the original version of Three Men and A Baby. Here Earth would be contemplated by an advanced race of aliens who cannot believe we wreck our own planet and only live 80 years, Serreau attempting to re-educate humanity - the most stupid, backward and violent race in the Universe. Cotillard would also appear in the dreamy short La Mouette, directed by Nils Tavernier for the series L'Amour Est A Reinventer, considering different and new ways of looking at love. Here Cotillard would lambast a friend for not using condoms with her boyfriend then, through a moving tape recording, be revealed to herself be HIV Positive.

Cotillard's most important release of her first busy year, though, would be Chloe, directed by Dennis Berry, who'd helmed her Highlander debut three years previously. Berry was an industry stalwart who'd once been married to Jean Seberg and was now hitched to Anna Karina. Indeed, Karina herself would co-star with Cotillard in Chloe. This would see Cotillard as a teenage tearaway who has a terrible relationship with her mother and is treated poorly by her boyfriend Ahmed. She spends her time on the streets, beside the railway track, joshing with her reprobate buddies, buddies who're so bored they'll even risk their lives under the trains for a kick. Seeking self-respect but lacking a role model, she finds Karina's bag on a park-bench and tracks the woman down. Meanwhile she comes across a charming swine who begins to groom her for prostitution. The race for her sad soul is on. It was a showy and successful role for Cotillard and, placing her beside one of French cinema's greatest icons, it was an accurate pointer as to what would follow.

1997 would see just two more shorts. First there'd be Keo, another Franco-Belgian effort directed by Olivier Hoofstadt. Then there'd be the 15-minute Swiss production La Sentence, helmed by Mauro Losa. Shot the year before, this would see two old people attempting to smuggle their draft-evading grandson out of the country in a coffin, only to be stopped at a mountain sentry station. 1998 would bring another short in Valerie Muller's La Surface De Reparation where Eric Poulain would be watching football with his mates. Meanwhile his shy girlfriend, Cotillard, whose birthday it is and who has planned a romantic day together, attempts to salvage something from the situation. And there'd be Luc Gallissaires' 18-minute Affaire Classee, a love story and police drama where an imprisoned Cotillard would be visited by her boyfriend.There'd also be a return to TV and a reunion with Gerard Rinaldi in Dominique Tabuteau's Interdit De Vieillir.

Oddly, despite all her efforts, all her practice in the shorts industry, all the time she'd spent with Anna Karina, all the natural talent she possessed, Cotillard would break through almost by accident, her role in Taxi being minor, to say the least. Directed by Gerard Pires, written by Luc Besson and set in Marseilles, this would see Samy Naceri as a pizza delivery man, legendary for his speed and daring on a moped. He's a form of French Vin Diesel, profoundly anti-authoritarian, but doing damage with his tongue rather than his fists. Now he switches to four wheels with a super-charged cab he's built himself and gets tangled up with keen young cop Frederic Diefenthal who's trying to catch a gang of cocky German bank robbers. Cotillard would play Lilly, a girl who hangs around with the pizza delivery guys.

Cotillard would do as much as she could with the role. She was a real, funky woman, taking her own pleasure from sex, taunting Naceri when he slips up, but still she had next to nothing to do with the movie's outrageous success in France where over 6 million cinema admissions were recorded. The Cesar-nominated Cotillard was carried along in the film's slipstream, gaining a public profile she had not yet really earned. Even she would dismiss her character as "a slightly nymphomaniac bimbo".

1999 would bring a real rush of releases. First would come La Guerre Dans Le Haut Pays, based on the novel by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz and directed by Francis Reusser. Set in the winter of 1797-98, this would see Napoleon's troops and their allies camped in high border country plotting the fall of Berne. Meanwhile the city plans its resistance as  young lovers Cotillard and Yann Tregouet are caught up in the civil, military, religious and familial conflict.

Next would come Alexandre Aja's  post-apocalyptic thriller Furia, shot in Morocco, where a repressive government would attempt to crush the imagination of the populace by banning all forms of art. Battling against this Orwellian totalitarianism would be Stanislas Merhar, an activist graffiti-monger who promotes freedom by creeping around the streets at night and daubing his rebellious work on the walls of the city. While about his business he meets fellow artist Cotillard and falls for her so, when she's arrested and horribly tortured, he seeks to be incarcerated too, to be with her and protect her. Based on a short story by Julio Cortazar, an Argentinian refugee in Paris who'd fled his own country due to its many "disappearances", the film would be thoughtful and in places, particularly Cotillard's torture scenes, quite tough, a very impressive effort from a director who was still just 19. Tellingly, Aja claimed that he had cast Cotillard on the basis of Chloe, not the massively successful Taxi. She'd been recommended to him by Julien Rassam, an actor and a successful director of short movies who had a small part in the film and who happened to be Cotillard's boyfriend. Theirs would be an intense, fierce love, burning bright and ending tragically.

Rassam was the son of Claude Berri, perhaps the most influential personality in post-war French cinema. Having won an Oscar for Best Short in 1966, he'd go on to direct Germinal and the Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources saga while also producing Tess, The Bear and the Asterix films, as well as many other hits. As Berri's first wife was Anne-Marie Rassam, Julien's uncles therefore included the film producers Paul and Jean-Pierre Rassam, the latter furthermore being married to Carole Bouquet, star of Bunuel's That Obscure Object Of Desire. Rassam was thus born of  French cinematic royalty.

As it turned out, though, the experience Cotillard gained from her relationship with Rassam would be both wonderful and bruising. Julien's mother had suffered from chronic depression and, having split from Berri, would commit suicide in 1995. Julien would take her death very badly and, it seemed, would share her passionate but self-destructive temperament. In 2000 he would throw himself from the third floor of the Hotel Raphael in Paris. Horribly, he would be left a quadriplegic, a state he endured for two years before taking his own life. It was a desperately sad story, a terrible waste of an artist of huge potential, and an emotional hammer-blow for Cotillard. Or rather a long, cruel series of hammer-blows.

Having appeared in the bizarre short L'Appel De La Cave, where she and Patrick Saverioni would play climbers invited back to a weirdo's mountain chalet, Cotillard had then starred in the - for Cotillard at least - painfully prophetic Du Bleu Jusqu'En Amerique. Set in a physical therapy centre, it would see paraplegic kids battling to regain the use of their limbs. One kid, there due to a scuba diving acident, would engage in a gradual romance with former coma victim Cotillard. It was close, unpleasantly close, to the trials Cotillard would soon undergo with Julien Rassam in real life. However, it was also indicative of the risks Cotillard was willing to take in her work, her burning desire to test and prove herself as an actress. For the part she'd spend weeks in a wheelchair, poring over notebooks she'd crammed with ideas and observations she'd collected throughout her intense research.

At this stage, Cotillard's career was not really progressing as rapidly as she'd hoped. She'd appear opposite Stephan Guerin-Tillie in the short Quelques Jours De Trop, and alongside Patrick Bruel and Stomy Bugsy in Gilles Paquet-Bremer's Le Marquis. There'd also be the 16-minute Boomer and the 13-minute Heureuse, again with Stephan Guerin-Tillie. On the big screen 2000 would see her appear only in Taxi 2, Samy Naceri and Frederic Diefenthal this time teaming up to rescue a Japanese diplomat kidnapped by oriental thugs. Cotillard's role would be bigger this time as she featured in several comic side-plots. One would have her introduce Naceri to her parents, her father being a general - strict, judgemental and thoroughly insane - and another would have her seethe with jealousy as she phones Naceri just as a woman gives birth in the back of his cab. Cotillard, of course, mistakes the woman's gasps and howls to be cries of passion. Amazingly, Taxi 2 would be an even bigger hit that its predecessor, enjoying ten million admissions in France, two million more than Amelie.

Her next effort would be 2001's Lisa, based on the novel by Claude Klotz. Here cinema lover Benoit Magimel, an expert of pre-war movies, would seek information on Sagamore Stevenin, a rising star who'd mysteriously disappeared during the Occupation. The discovery of an unfinished film including a sequence where Stevenin shares a big baroque bed with Cotillard leads Magimel to Jeanne Moreau, who's playing the older Cotillard. Now Moreau's memories roll like another movie as we see Cotillard swept along by the dangerous tides of love and war.

The same year, 2001, would see Cotillard appear in an episode of Les Redoubtables, where 13 different directors, including Claude Chabrol and Georges Lautner, would deliver a 10-minute film dealing with aspects of death. Cotillard, once more with Stephan Guerin-Tillie, would headline Olivier Megaton's Doggy Dog. Next up would come the atmospheric thriller Une Femme Piegee where, having cheated on her lawyer husband, she finds herself to be a prime murder suspect. To prove her innocence she must go on the run.

Cotillard's final release of 2001 would be perhaps her biggest challenge yet. This was Les Jolies Choses, directed by Gilles Paquet-Bremer and featuring Stomy Bugsy and Patrick Bruel, with all of whom she'd made the short Le Marquis. Here Cotillard would play the double role of twin sisters. One would be an extrovert model who's offered a recording contract even though she can't sing, the other a quiet and demure girl who actually can. So, the quiet one's asked to impersonate the other to get the recording done. However, when she finds that her sister has killed herself she decides to impersonate her full-time and so is drawn into the model's secretly dark and depraved life. Cotillard, recommended to the director by her friend Elodie Navarre, would train specifically as a singer to play the role and would be quite brilliant., receiving her second Cesar nomination. Her onstage appearance in the film would be filmed at the Zenith, Patrick Bruel allowing the film-makers to "borrow" his audience at the end of one of his own concerts.

2002 would bring just one new release, the arty noir thriller Une Affaire Privee, where Thierry Lhermitte would play an old school private eye - hangdog, chainsmoking and womanising - who takes on the case of 22-year-old Parisian student who's gone missing. Interviewing relatives and friends, he begins to uncover murky secrets, Cotillard appearing as the student's seductive best friend. It would be an unhappy experience for the actress who'd later claim she spent more time naked in the movie than clothed. And if people had the impression that she was comfortable naked, she said, they were very wrong. She detested it.

Less detestable would be the easy success of Taxi 3 where Samy Naceri and Frederic Diefenthal (who'd just appeared in Une Affaire Privee) would take on the vicious Santa Claus gang, Diefenthal being captured and tortured with oral sex by Bai Ling. A terrible way to go, n'est-ce pas? Again Cotillard would head the sub-plots. This time Naceri and Diefenthal are both expectant fathers and neither are ready. Thus a pregnant Cotillard pushes Naceri to sort himself out or leave.

At this stage Cotillard was in a bad way. Her private life had gone to hell and she was still not being offered the kind of challenging roles she felt she needed. She needed to progress, to exhibit her skills before a far wider audience. She found herself bored and jaded, she was bitterly jealous of the opportunities offered to other actresses. She even considered jacking in her film career and moving into classical theatre. Then, suddenly, it all changed. Cotillard would receive a call from Tim Burton, then casting for his new movie Big Fish. Burton loved Cotillard's face, her huge eyes and expressive features reminded him of silent movie heroines. He needed an actress to react to Albert Finney, someone to convincingly show joy, sadness, pity and wonderment at his wild stories. Cotillard was his girl.

This was Cotillard's big chance and she took it deadly seriously, learning English at a Berlitz language centre, determined not to let herself down. And so she'd play the heavily pregnant photographer wife of journalist Billy Crudup, a successful woman who's just got pictures into Newsweek. She loves her husband and so accompanies him home when he hears that his father Finney is desperately ill. Crudup is heartily sick of Finney's crazy, self-aggrandising stories but Cotillard listens to him, the stories being told in flashback with Ewan McGregor playing the young Finney, encountering giants, exotic Siamese twins, mysterious villages, mad circuses and bank robbers. Cotillard's part would not be showy, she'd sit dutifully by Finney's bedside and be glimpsed at the hospital and the funeral, but it would be she who recognises Finney as a true romantic and his stories as being not simply more entertaining than reality but more in keeping with the spirit of the truth. Communicating this to Crudup she'd aid him in his final reconciliation with his father.

Cotillard's other release of 2003 would be another important one. This was Jeux D'Enfants where she and Guillaume Canet would play a pair of youngsters engaged in an ongoing game of dare. This would begin at school when they'd make a pact that when one passes the other a little tin box painted as a merry-go-round the receiver must do anything the giver demands. It starts as a childish game, then becomes more serious. Cotillard must wear her bra and panties outside her clothes when taking an exam, Canet must say no on the altar on his wedding day. Romantically, they kiss on top of a car, much to the driver's annoyance. Gradually, their crazy obsession gets darker and darker, and the movie would be truly depressing were it not for director Yann Samuell's visual prowess, introducing swooping cameras, dream sequences and animations.

Such was Jeux D'Enfants success, particularly in France and Italy, that it even scored a limited release in the States. Reviews would be positive and Cotillard would win a Jury Prize at Newport Beach Film Festival. Things were looking up. Interestingly, considering what was to come, Jeux D'Enfants would feature the young Cotillard appearing at a funeral and singing La Vie En Rose.

2003 would also see Cotillard in another pop video, this time for French electro band Tommy Hools' track Givin' Up. This would feature Richard Archer from the group Hard Fi strutting and stomping around town. He's dumped girlfriend Cotillard, it seems, and she briefly runs after him. At the end Archer, quite reasonably, would realise his mistake and knock on the door of her flat. All he receives is a terse "Fuck off". Twice, just to be sure. Cotillard would also appear in a video for Hawksley Workman's No Reason To Cry Your Eyes Out, where she's seen in her car at night in the rain, stuck in a traffic jam and weeping over a letter, a model of Workman coming to life and trying to comfort her.

2004 would be another busy year. Cotillard's first release would be the extraordinary Innocence, a strange fairy tale of a girls' school set in the woods surrounded by high walls. There are five houses, with girls ordered by age, and there's little supervision, just a couple of aging servants to cook and generally oversee. Lessons would be provided by a crippled Helen de Fougerolles and strict but caring dance teacher Cotillard who arranges performances for the headmistress and also secret shows  in a strange undeground theatre. It was an odd piece, a symbolic study of female childhood, exploring the games, the crushes, the bonds between older and younger girls, the hopes, the rebellions, the cruelty and the intense relationship with nature. We'd also see ther claustrophobia of emotional closeness, the tyranny of conformity and the increasingly shadowy presence of men.

Cotillard's next film would be another giant hit. This was Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement where five men are sentenced to execution for attempting to escape the horrors of WW1 via self-mutilation. One is Gaspard Ulliel whose girlfriend, Audrey Tautou, refuses to accept he's dead and investigates the case, Jeunet building the tension as he gradually reveals the details, all the while entertaining us with his usual brilliant set-pieces and quirky asides. Cotillard would appear as Tina Lombardi, a whore close to the front line who loved one of the supposedly dead men. From the start she's revealed as vengeful as she has another fellow held down and stabbed in the arse. After the war, her vendetta blossoms as she seeks revenge on the officers who condemned her lover. One she seduces and ties up on a four-poster then shoots the mirror above, showering him with a deadly rain of glass. Another is shot with a hidden gun set off by a tug on a spectacle chain, an ingenious mechanism that outdoes Travis Bickle. Caught in an attempt to assassinate Marshal Petain, she's jailed and sent to the guillotine, Tautou interviewing her before she dies and passing on a final message from her man. Cotillard was now wan, gaunt and intense where before she was silent, beautiful and murderous, an impossibly glamorous femme fatale. At last she'd win a Cesar for her efforts. She's also win the Chopard Trophy at Cannes. Each year since 2001 the Swiss jewellery company, in order to promote creativity (and really expensive baubles), would give a award to the most promising male and female up-and-comers, known as the Revelations of the Year. Audrey Tautou had won in 2001, Paz Vega in 2002, Diane Kruger in 2003.

The year would also see Cotillard narrate the children's audio book Five Musical Tales For Little Ones, written by Isabelle Aboulker, tunes being provided by the Polysons choir. She'd join Catherine  Deneuve, Isabelle Adjani and Vanessa Paradis on Dix Ans Ensemble, a double album and short film made by Artists Against AIDS In Africa. And she'd appear in her recent co-star Guillaume Canet's quirky, surreal comedy Narco, though her contribution would hit the cutting-room floor.

2005 would bring a long string of Cotillard releases.  First there'd be Steve Suissa's Cavalcade, featuring comedian Titoff who'd earlier appeared in Les Jolies Choses, and also former co-star Stephan Guerin-Tillie. Here musician Titoff would ignore girlfriend Cotillard and carouse gayly until a  car crash sends him into a coma and leaves him in hospital.

Next would come Edy, actually written and directed by her old cohort Stephan Guerin-Tillie. This was a dark comedy where suicidal insurance salesman Francois Berleand would turn to mentor Philippe Noiret for help. Cotillard would turn up twice, first in a ridiculously sexy dream sequence where she'd wear a revealing red outfit and flash lots of leg as she sang It Had To Be You, then at the end  where she attends a job interview with Berleand, her very presence convincing him that life is indeed worth living. Following this would come Remi Bezancon's Ma Vie En L'Air, a frothy rom-com where Vincent Elbaz, whose mother died while giving birth to him on a plane, cannot bear to fly, despite running a flight simulator for pilots in training. When his girlfriend leaves for Australia he cannot follow. Ten years later he's falling for Cotillard, a cute, smart radio host who's moved in next door - then his former love returns.

Far more testing would be Abel Ferrara's Mary, concerning faith and redemption in cynical times. Here Matthew Modine would shoot a new version of the Jesus story, with Juliette Binoche as a reimagined Magdalene.  TV show host Forest Whitaker spies a controversial story and brings Modine onto the show, trouble flaring as the Ferrara considered the difficulty of being a person of faith in a world peopled by hard-nosed non-believers and frenzied fundamentalists.  Cotillard would turn up briefly as Modine's assistant with whom Whitaker enjoys a one-night stand, in the process betraying his pregnant wife Heather Graham.

Next would come the heavy-duty Sauf Le Respect Que Je Vous Dois, where Olivier Gournet would suffer a life of drudgery and toil, being bullied and used both at work and at home. When a friend is fired he goes temporarily berserk and takes off for Paris, where he meets young Cotillard. Concerning social oppression and everyday stress, the film would also feature Julie Depardieu and Marion's cousin Laurent. Her final release of 2005 would be The Black Box, originally to be titled Le Texas N'Existe Pas and directed by veteran actor Richard Berry. Here exuberant comedian Jose Garcia, who'd earlier appeared in Cotillard's short Keo, would be cast against type, playing a man who's spent a long period in hospital in a coma following a car accident. When he wakes, nurse Cotillard tells him that he's been speaking aloud throughout and she's been noting down his words.

2006 would see another rush of releases. First there'd be Julie Lopes-Curval's Toi Et Moi, a breezy romantic number where Cotillard would play the younger sister of Julie Depardieu, recently her co-star in Sauf Le Respect. Depardieu would play a journalist for a girlie photo mag, using her own life and those of her friends for stories, over-examinig and embroidering till no man can ever fulfil her expectations. Cotillard,meanwhile, is a shy cellist in the city orchestra. Far from glamorous, she's been seeing a teacher for years but now anguishes over her feelings for a celebrity violinist. As the film followed the sisters' quest for true love, Cotillard would come out of her shell, gaining self-belief and high heels while Lopes-Curval mixes comic art with the live action, the comics mocking the tribulations of the real. Following this would come a reunion with director Olivier Van Hoofstadt for Dikkenek, a hilarious oddity finding humour in rudeness and crudeness, where Jeremie Renier would be constantly beaten up and Cotillard would play a school teacher taking her class on a field trip to the National Museum of Traffic Accidents. Weird and wired, she's right on the edge of losing it, coming over like Joan Cusack at her nutty best. Very different would be Fair Play, a longer version of Lionel Bailliu's short film Squash. Concerning the vicious politics of the work place, this would see businessman Eric Savin take his workers on a sporty trip where they will swim, climb and bond. Cotillard would be Savin's secretary, shy and fearful but also selfish and aggressive. One of Savin's colleagues has some dirt on her, and she doesn't like it.

Since her appearance in Big Fish, Cotillard had been pushing for Hollywood parts. Big roles in big movies, real responsibility and a real chance to shine. Unfortunately, nothing had come her way.

Just a small step. It may have been Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott, but it was still a film set in France - no guarantee that it would lead to American roles. What she needed was an attention-grabbing role and she'd get one right now when winning the lead in Olivier Dahan's La Vie En Rose, known in France as La Mome. This would tell the life-story of Edith Piaf, with Cotillard playing the great singer from her late teens to her early death. As a youngster, the product of a serially broken home, who'd lived in a circus, in a brothel and on the streets, she was guarded and defensive, her shoulders hunched with tension, only seeming to relax when she sings to passers-by for spare change. Discovered by promoter Gerard Depardieu, she's now a picture, first of fear then of unbridled joy as she enjoys her first successful club dates. Its not simply youthful enthusiasm she's exhibiting, but the heartfelt appreciation of someone who's previously been given nothing. Soon there'd be horror as Depardieu is shot in a gangland killing, but Piaf fights back, rising to become France's most popular entertainer. Cotillard is great here again, revelling in mouthy drunkenness then growing into the toughest taskmistress, terrifying her staff and her songwriters. Trying to make it in America, she rages at her lack of success, slips into morphine addiction and is crushed by grief when her lover, boxer Marcel Cerdan, dies in a plane crash, a scene that's shocking in its emotional power. Then on she goes to cancer and death, wracked by terrible memories then finally relaxing at the thought of a full life well-lived. It was a performance of incredible range and sensitivity, intelligence and force.

It had been tough from the start. The producers had not wanted Cotillard in the role, preferring a better-known actress Audrey Tautou">- Audrey Tautou, Juliette Binoche or even Vanessa Paradis. But Dahan wanted Cotillard and was willing to reduce his budget by $5 million to get her. Cotillard would endure three hours in makeup each day, having her hairline driven up and her face ravaged. The singing was difficult, Cotillard struggling to lip-synch to the voice provided by Jil Aigrot. And the work would continue along after filming was over. The producers knew they had something special on their hands and encouraged Cotillard to campaign for the Oscar. She refused, considering the process to be vulgar and anti-art. However, finally recognising that this is how it is in Hollywood and that success at the Academy Awards might lead to her being offered the roles she'd always dreamed of, she relented, spending the next year promoting La Vie En Rose, glad-handing and smiling sweetly for the camera.

And it would work. When La Vie En Rose premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival Cotillard was lauded with a 15-minute standing ovation. She'd proceed to triumph worldwide, winning a Cesar, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and the feted Oscar.  Thus she'd become the second French actress, after Simone Signoret, to win an Academy Award (Claudette Colbert was US-raised). She'd be the third actress to win by playing a singer in a biopic, after Sissy Spacek in The Coal Miner's Daughter and Reese Witherspoon in Walk The Line. And she'd be only the second actress to win when performing in a language other than English, the other being Sophia Loren for 1960's La Ciociara. Unfortunately, some of the edge was taken off her victory when, just three days after her win, the French magazine Marianne would publish quotes she'd made in a TV interview back in February, 2007, where, it was said, she'd suggested the attacks on the World Trade Centre may have been staged. In fact, she'd simply been revealing a healthy scepticism about official versions, but a controversy was whipped up nonetheless. Cotillard hid out in Brittany, at her grandmother Leontine's place in Plemet. There was fear of irate Americans picketing her next picture, Michael Mann's Public Enemies. Luckily, sense was quickly seen, and the furore died away as fast as it had been raised.

Despite this trouble, Cotillard's life was going really very well, indeed. Having briefly been linked with her former co-star and director Stephan Guerin-Tillie, and then the singer Sinclair, 2007 would see her enter a relationship with Guillaume Canet, with whom she'd made Jeux D'Enfants.

The success of La Vie En Rose meant that Cotillard would not be able to take her place in La Cle, the next film by Guillaume Nicloux who'd earlier directed her in Une Affaire Privee. Instead, she'd move on to the aforementioned Public Enemies, where Johnny Depp would star as gangster John Dillinger. Cotillard would play Bilie Frechette, a hat-check girl who grabs Depp's attention. Direct and very forward, he sweeps her up ito his world of travel, horse races, furs, fancy restaurants and hot sex. She goes along with him as he's harried and attacked by the police, his associates being exterminated until she's the only friend he has left. In this tough, macho world, it's Cotillard who brings the emotional weight, panicking during an escape attempt, silently defiant when she's caught, beaten, tortured and left to wet herself by the cops, refusing to crack before them when she hears that Depp is dead. Her accent was excellent, too, Cotillard typically having researched Frechette's complex voice, a combination of French, Canadian and Wisconsin flavours, with a touch of Menominee Indian.

Beyond this, there was the posibility of Cotillard suffering from what was known as the Binoche effect. Having won an Oscar for The English Patient, Juliette Binoche had been considered too expensive to be cast in a French movie and had taken ten years to recover her position in her home industry. Paired with Guillaume Canet, Cotillard would not have this problem, the couple being simply too hot to ignore and also generating their own projects. Her next picture, Karim Dridi's The Last Flight would be a romantic adventure drama where Canet would play Cotillard's lover, missing in the Sahara. Aviator Cotillard would then go looking for him, arriving at a French Foreign Legion outpost just as a rebellion kicks off.

After this she'd experience a real change of pace with Rob Marshall's Nine, the film of a hit musical stage show heavily influenced by Fellini's 8 1/2. Postponed in 2007 due to a writers' strike, Nine would see Daniel Day-Lewis (who'd won an Oscar for There Will Be Blood on the same night as Cotillard) would play an Italian film director suffering writer's block and using his experiences with the women in his life to break through it. The female cast would be extraordinary, with Nicole Kidman as Day Lewis's muse, Penelope Cruz as his mistress, Judi Dench as his manager, Sophia Loren as his mother. Cotillard would play his wife Luisa, the part played by Giulietta Masina in Fellini's film, by Karen Aliers in the original stage show and by Mary Stuart Masterson in the onstage revival. A film star, she loves her husband but suffers anxiety as she watches their marriage disintegrate and horror and rage as he betrays their intimacy in his work. Called upon to dance, sing and up the emotional ante, Cotillard would play her part to the full. She'd gain extra exposure from a series of short films she shot for Dior where she would play the femme fatale for her former director Olivier Dahan. She'd also record a song, The Strong Ones, for Dahan's films for Cartier's Love range.

She'd then move on to appear in Christopher Nolan's Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, and Nolan regulars Michael Caine and Cillian Murphy. She'd also reunite with partner Guillaume Canet for his latest directorial effort Les Petits Mouchoirs, where a group of Parisian friends would holiday at Cap Ferret and begin to confess their inner secrets as the tragi-comedy unfolds. Also featuring Benoit Magimel, who'd appeared in Cotillard's Lisa and Fair Play, the film would inevitably be compared to The Big Chill.

As for the future, it seems likely that Cotillard will remain active for now, switching between Gallic fare and Hollywood movies as she pleases. However, desiring to raise a family, it's possible that she may eventually take the Daniel Day Lewis route and make rare appearances in films that interest and test her. It took her many years to be accepted, to be offered the roles she needed and deserved. She's unlikely to waste the opportunities she has now.

Domonic Wills