With both of her parents actors and drama teachers, Marion Cotillard’s destiny was mapped out from the start. However, it would take a little time for the French actress to start to make her place in the dramatic profession. “The theater helped me find the words that I had missed so much and to open up,” explains Marion Cotillard. After she had taken her first steps on the small screen in the hit television series Highlander, it was the commercial success of the film Taxi, produced by Luc Besson, which revealed her to the public and earned her a first César nomination at only 23 years old.
After having shot two additional movies in the Taxi series Marion Cotillard told the producers and screenwriters that she wished to put an end to her involvement in the saga. For her, it was time to get involved in more serious films, that could have a real emotional impact on their audiences. It was shortly after that that she found the “project of her life” by landing the role of the singer Edith Piaf in Olivier Dahan’s biographical film La vie en Rose, in 2007. The producers and studios had originally planned to offer the role to another French actress, Audrey Tautou, but following the insistence of the director, Olivier Dahan, Marion was chosen and would make her name in film history by becoming the first actress to win a Golden Globe for a foreign language performance since 1972, when Liv Ullmann won for The Emigrants. She was also the first person to win a Golden Globe (comedy or musical) for a performance in a foreign language.
This would prove only the beginning of an impressive career in Hollywood. Marion would seduce the public with her role of “Billie Frechette” in the film Public Enemies by Michael Mann in 2009, then in the same year appear in the film of the musical adaptation Nine by Rob Marshall in for which she was nominated again for the Golden Globe Awards in the category of Best Actress – Motion Picture – Musical/Comedy.
Cotillard continued to ride the wave of success with the film Inception, directed by Christopher Nolan, in 2010, then the following year with the film by Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris, and the film by Christopher Nolan The Dark Knight Rises. She would earn a third Golden Globe nomination in the drama Rust and Bone by Jacques Audiard.
Today, Marion Cotillard continues not only to make successful films but also to win nominations for the Golden Globe Awards: this year is her fourth nomination, for her performance in Annette. “Today, I was lucky to have already been widely recognized, but I still need recognition,” said the actress at the press conference organized by the Cannes Film Festival. “I will admit to you that this is a big question in my personal life. Why do we need to be seen, to be heard, to be loved by so many people that we don’t even know? “
At the rate at which she continues to succeed, Marion does not seem to be about to suffer from a lack of recognition.