Sandrine Bonnaire

Biography: life and films

Sandrine Bonnaire is a French film actress, film director and screenwriter. She was born in Gannat, France on 31 May 1967. Having made her film debut in the early 1980s as an extra in two popular comedies (Les Sous-doués en vacances and La Boum 2), Sandrine Bonnaire's career got off to a flying start when, at the age of 15, she took the lead role in Maurice Pialat's À nos amours (1983). Her widely acclaimed performance was rewarded with the Most Promising Actress César in 1984. It was her harrowing portrayal of a vulnerable but stoical outsider in Agnès Varda's Sans toit ni loi which won her the Best Actress César in 1986. By the early 1990s, Bonnaire had earned her reputation as one of French cinema's finest actresses, with a particular aptitude for complex character portrayals which explored some of the darker aspects of the female psyche. Many leading filmmakers were keen to exploit her talents, including Jacques Rivette, who cast her as Joan of Arc in his celebrated Jeanne la Pucelle diptych. In Patrice Leconte's Monsieur Hire (1989) and Claude Chabrol's La Cérémonie (1995), Bonnaire gave two of her most disturbing performances, but she proved she could also play comedy in such films as Philippe Lioret's Mademoiselle (2001) and Pierre Jolivet's Je crois que je l'aime (2007). In 2007, Sandrine Bonnaire made her directing debut with a sensitive documentary about her autistic sister, Elle s'appelle Sabine. She subsequently directed the fictional drama J'enrage de son absence (2012), which starred William Hurt, the father of her eldest daughter Jeanne.

Filmography