Marion Cotillard is an Academy award-winning French actress, musician, singer-songwriter, and environmentalist. An established actress of the French cinema, Cotillard has also made her mark in Hollywood. A few of her notable films include Taxi (1998), A Very Long Engagement (2004), La Vie En Rose (2007), The Immigrant (2013), Two Days, One Night (2014) and Macbeth (2015).

Early Life

Cotillard was born in Paris to the Moliere Award-winning director, Jean-Claude Cotillard, and Niseema Theillaud, an actress and drama teacher. She has two siblings - two younger twin brothers Quentin and Guillaume, who is a screenwriter and director.

Personal Life

Cotillard was in a relationship with the French actor Julien Rassam in the 90s and later dated the actor Stephan Guerin-Tille from 2000 to 2005. She broke up with Stephan in 2005 and in the same year started dating the French singer Sinclair. Her relationship with Sinclair lasted for 2 years and in 2007 she started dating the French actor and director Guillaume Canet.

Canet and Cotillard have known each other since 1997 and have also co-starred in the movie Love Me If You Dare (2003). The couple`s son, Marcel, was born on 19th May 2011.

Movie Career
Cotillard showed a keen interest in acting as a child and would act in her father`s plays. She continued to appear in stage plays and later also appeared in minor roles on television shows. The actress made her debut with the French romantic movie The Story of a Boy Who Wanted to Be Kissed (1994) at the age of 18. For the next few years, she appeared in various short films but her definitive role came with the 1998 action comedy movie Taxi directed by Gerard Pires. The movie was commercially successful in France and Cotillard was also nominated for the Cesar Award for Most Promising Actress. The following year she won the Best Actress Award at the Autrans Film Festival for her performance in the movie War in the Highlands. For the next few years, she gave promising performances in movies such as Furia (1999), Lisa (2001), Pretty Things (2001), and A Private Affair (2002). It was only in 2003 that Cotillard made her Hollywood debut with Tim Burton`s Big Fish.

The year 2004 turned out to be successful for the French star as she won the Chopard Trophy of Female Revelation and appeared in critically and commercially acclaimed movies such as A Very Long Engagement and Innocence. After having a couple of productive years in French cinema, Cotillard appeared Ridley Scott`s romantic comedy A Good Year opposite Russel Crowe.,

In 2007 she gave one of her career best performances in the 2007 biographical musical movie La Vie en rose; Cotillard essayed the role of Edith Piaf, a celebrated French singer, songwriter and actress. The director of the movie Olivier Dahan had decided to cast Cotillard in the movie even before he had met her; citing similarities between Cotillard`s and Piaf`s eyes. Although Olivier faced opposition from the producers and distributors who opined that Cotillard was not a bankable choice, he stuck to his choice, and his stand exceptionally paid off as the movie received international acclaim. Cotillard`s poignant performance as Piaf earned her widespread recognition and she also won the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. Her path breaking performance received praises from the critics while the eminent theater director Sir Trevor Nunn stated described her performance as "one of the greatest performances on film ever".

In 2009 she appeared in the Hollywood movie Public Enemies alongside Christian Bale and Johnny Depp; Cotillard played the role of Billie Frechette. In the same year she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy for her incredulous performance in the movie Nine directed by Rob Marshall. In her next Hollywood movie, she was seen essaying the role of Mal Cobb in Christopher Nolan`s Inception (2010). Nolan described her role as "the essence of the femme fatale".

In 2011 she appeared in Woody Allen`s Midnight in Paris portraying Owen Wilson`s love interest. In the following year she teamed up with Christopher Nolan for the second time for the movie The Dark Knight Rises - Cotillard essayed the role of Miranda Tate, a board member of the Wayne Enterprises. While she had made her presence felt in Hollywood, she continued to deliver astounding performances in French films - this was evident as she reaped several awards for her role in her next French-Belgian movie Rust and Bone (2012) directed by Jacques Audiard. In the movie, Cotillard portrayed the role of an amputee who loses her legs after an accident. She won the Global de Cristal Award, Santi Jordi Award, Etoile d`Or Award, Hawaii International Film Festival Award, and Irish Film & Television Award for Best Actress while she was also nominated for her first Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Drama. Cate Blanchett who wrote an op-ed for Variety described her performance to be `simply astonishing` and said: Marion has created a character of nobility and candour, seamlessly melding herself into a world we could not have known without her. Her performance is as unexpected and as unsentimental and raw as the film itself".

Although Cotillard had received worldwide recognition and had appeared in several Hollywood movies in a supporting role, her first lead role came only in the year 2013 with the movie The Immigrant which also stars Jeremy Renner and Joaquin Phoenix. She essayed the role of a Polish immigrant Ewa Cybulska who wants to live the American dream in 1920. The movie received critical acclaim but it was Cotillard who stole the show yet again with her `polished` act. She learned 20 pages of Polish dialogues for her role and several American critics praised her performance.

In another touching performance, Cotillard was seen portraying a Belgian factory worker who has to convince her colleagues to give up on their bonus so that she can keep her job in the movie Two Days, One Night (2014) directed by the Dardenne brother`s - Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne. Her performance received a 15-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival and was hailed to be the `best performance of the festival`.

In 2015, Cotillard starred in the film adaptation of William Shakespeare`s play Macbeth - the actress essayed the role of Lady Macbeth. Although she received mixed reviews for her accent, her performance received high praise from the critics with Variety`s critic, Guy Lodge stating that it was a performance that "contains both the woman`s abandoned self and her worst-case incarnation, often in the space of a single scene," and remarked that "Her deathless sleepwalking scene, staged in minimalist fashion under a gauze of snowflakes in a bare chapel, is played with tender, desolate exhaustion; it deserves to be viewed as near-definitive. In the same year, Cotillard also voiced the character `April Franklin` in the French-Belgian-Canadian movie April and the Extraordinary World. Her 2016 releases include It`s Only the End of the World, From the Land of the Moon, and Allied opposite Brad Pitt and Assassin`s Creed. Her other releases include Ismael`s Ghosts (2017), Angel Face (2018), Little White Lies 2 (2019), Bigger Than Us (2020) and Dolittle (2020).

As Singer

Apart from being an exceptional actress Cotillard is a singer and plays multiple musical instruments including guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, and tambourine. In 2001 she co-wrote and performed the song "La Fille De Joie" for the movie Pretty Things. Cotillard also co-wrote and performed the song The Strong Ones" for short film by Olivier Dahan.

TV Career

In the 90s Cotillard appeared in several TV shows, Highlander (1993), Extreme Limite (1994), Theo la tendresse (1996). However, her first lead role on television came with the TV movie Chloe (1996) in which she essayed the character of a teenage runaway girl who is forced into prostitution. In the subsequent years, she appeared in several TV movies such as Interdit de Vieillir (1998), Une femme piegee (2001), and Generation duo (2008). Cotillard has also starred in the TV shows Les Redoutables (2001), Le Debarquement (2013), and Comedy Central`s All-Star Non-Denominational Christmas Special (2014).

Theater Career

Cotillard was a part of the theater production Y`a des Npunpurs Dans les Placards directed by Laurent Cotillard in 1997. From 2005 she has been a part of the production Joan of Arc at the Stake essaying Joan of Arc.