France is home to some of the best actresses in the world. Here are the current French actresses you need to know about if you enjoy French cinema. Despite the patriarchal world we live in, ironically, it’s French actresses who’ve found more success as performers outside of France than men. These are the leading French actresses to know, some of whom you might recognize in American movies.
French Actresses Currently Working
Here are the coolest French actresses to keep an eye on if you love French movies and TV shows.
Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard is the most well-known French actress outside of France. She is best known for her Oscar-winning portrayal as legendary French singer Edith Piaf in the biopic La Môme (2007). She was the first French actress to receive an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
Cotillard was raised in a creative family in Orléans, France: her dad was a filmmaker, and her mom was an artist. Cotillard’s parents were both members of a theater troupe, and she received her first taste of performing when she was cast in a movie directed by her father.
She went to Paris when she was a teenager to establish a professional career. Cotillard made her cinematic debut in Luc Besson’s Taxi (1998), playing the partner of a pizza guy who became a rogue taxi driver. In the next five years, two more films were released, and the Taxi series turned out to be one of France’s most popular. In 2005, she won a César Award, France’s most prestigious cinematic prize, for her role as a spiteful prostitute in A Very Long Engagement (2004).
Eva Green
Eva Green is a British-French actress and celebrity. She was born on July 6, 1980, in Paris, France. She is best known for her roles in films such as “The Dreamers,” “Casino Royale,” and “Penny Dreadful.”
Green studied acting in Paris and started her career on stage before transitioning to film. Her breakthrough role came in the risqué 2003 Bernardo Bertolucci film The Dreamers, in which she played a young Parisian who engages in a passionate, yet dysfunctional, relationship with her brother and an American exchange student.
Green then gained international recognition for her portrayal of Vesper Lynd, the love interest of James Bond in the 2006 film Casino Royale. She has since appeared in numerous films, including Kingdom of Heaven, Sin City, and 300: Rise of an Empire.
She collaborates often with director Tim Burton and they’ve churned out quirky, dark hits like Dark Shadows, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and Dumbo together.
Her next highly anticipated project is The Three Musketeers, set to come out in April 2023 and starring famous French actors Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris and Louis Garrel.
Léa Seydoux
Léa Seydoux is an internationally successful French actress. She rose to prominence after receiving her first César Award for her role in The Beautiful Person (2008) and winning the Trophée Chopard, a special Cannes Film Festival prize awarded to emerging actresses.
In French theaters, Lea was recognized for the César Award for Most Promising Actress for the second time for her work in Dear Prudence (2010), and Lead Actress for her performance as Marie Antoinette’s lady-in-waiting in the movie Farewell, My Queen (2012).
Seydoux further rose to fame after starring as a homosexual art student in the movie Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013), which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013. She won a Lumières Award for her role in Grand Central (2013).
Midnight in Paris (2011) and The Lobster (2015) are a few prominent Hollywood movies she has acted in.
Most recently, Seydoux is the latest Bond girl, starring opposite Daniel Craig in No Time to Die (2021). She also appeared as a love-struck prison guard in The French Dispatch (2021), directed by Wes Anderson. Her success in the United States proves she is truly one of the best French actresses in the world.
Charlotte Gainsbourg
Charlotte Lucy Gainsbourg is an actress from France born on July 21, 1971. As the child of English model Jane Birkin and French composer Serge Gainsbourg, Charlotte had big shoes to fill. She’s succeeded in making a name for herself, and recently received critical acclaim for her performance as the mother of an accused rapist in The Accusation (2021), directed by her husband Yvan Attal.
Gainsbourg made her musical premiere with her dad on the song “Lemon Incest” and when she turned 15, she put out an album with him. However, she waited more than 20 years to release commercially and critically successful albums as a grownup.
Gainsbourg has switched her focus to movies, including some of the most challenging roles in twisted films directed by Lars von Trier.
Audrey Tautou
Audrey Justine Tautou is a charming actress from France and the daughter of Evelyne Marie Laure Nuret, a schoolteacher, and Bernard Tautou, a dentist. The dark-haired French beauty developed a passion for comedy when she was a kid and began acting studies at the Cours Florent. She was named the top young icon at the ninth Jeune Comédien de Cinéma Festival in Bezier, France, in 1998. Director Tonie Marshall was one of the first to cast her in Venus Beauty Institute (1999). For this, Tautou earned a Lumière Award for Most Promising Young Actress.
Audrey Tautou is most famous for her role in the global smash hit film Amélie (2001) where she played an awkward yet good-hearted French girl living in Paris. This cult film helped establish her profile as one of the best French actresses and she soon appeared in the English-language movie The Da Vinci Code (2006) based on the bestselling novel. Fashion lovers adored her portrayal of the young French fashion designer Coco Chanel in the period piece Coco Before Chanel (2009). While Tautou has stepped away from acting in more recent years, her body of stellar work gives us plenty to admire for now!
Virginie Efira
Virginie Efira is a Belgian actress and television host born on May 5, 1977, in Brussels, Belgium. She initially pursued a career in television as a presenter and journalist before transitioning to acting in the early 2000s.
Efira’s breakthrough role came in 2004 when she was cast in the French comedy-drama television series P.J. She went on to appear in several successful French and Belgian films, including La chance de ma vie (2011), 20 ans d’écart (2013), and Elle (2016), which earned her a César Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
My favorite role of hers has been in the French film adapted from a best-selling novel, Waiting for Bojangles (2021).
Emma Mackey
Emma Mackey is a British-French actress. She was born on January 4, 1996, in Le Mans, France, to a British father and a French mother. She is best known for her role as Maeve Wiley in the Netflix series Sex Education. She works as an actress in both French and English.
Mackey studied at the University of Leeds, where she pursued a degree in English language and literature. She became interested in acting and joined a drama group during her studies. After graduation, she moved to London to pursue an acting career.
Mackey has also appeared in an acclaimed French biopic about Gustave Eiffel, Eiffel (2021), and the Agatha Christie murder mystery period piece Death on the Nile (2022). She has been nominated for several awards for her work on Sex Education, including a BAFTA Television Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Charlotte Le Bon
Charlotte Le Bon was raised in Montreal, the daughter of two Quebec actors. Charlotte began modeling, which led to her landing in France, where she began her profession as an actress. The Canadian-born actress starred in various French television shows in 2010, most notably as a stand-up comedian and weatherwoman on the beloved franchise Le grand journal de Canal+.
Charlotte made her feature film debut in the 2012 movie Astérix and Obélix: God Save Britannia. She also appeared as a modeling muse in Yves Saint Laurent, an acclaimed 2014 fashion biopic film directed by Jalil Lespert. Charlotte’s eccentric personality charmed director Steven Spielberg when he watched her on Le grand journal de Canal+. He asked her to screen test for The Hundred-Foot Journey, which he produced and Lasse Hallström executed. In the movie, Charlotte portrays an ambitious cook who serves in a posh French restaurant owned by Helen Mirren. She most recently acted alongside Christian Bale in The Walk (2015), Sens dessus dessous (2015), Anthropoid (2016), and the drama series The Promise (2017).
Clémence Poésy
Clémence Guichard was born on October 30, 1982 in L’Haÿ-les-Roses, a suburban Paris commune. The world better knows her by her stage name Clémence Poésy. The blonde natural beauty is one of the top French actresses and models. Poésy pursued drama after beginning her career in theater as a kid and has worked in French movies and television since 1999, along with some English-language movies. She played Fleur Delacour in the Harry Potter franchise, Chloë in In Bruges (2008), Rana in 127 Hours (2010), and Natasha Rostova in War & Peace (2007). Younger audiences will recognize her as the jealousy-inducing new French girlfriend of Chuck Bass in the Gossip Girl (2007) series.
Marine Vacth
Marine Vacth is a gorgeous French actress born in Paris, France. She grew up in the suburbs of Paris and eventually became a model as a young adult, working for brands like Yves Saint Laurent perfumes and Chloé. She gained international recognition for her role in the sultry François Ozon film, Young and Beautiful (2013), where she played a high school-aged call girl. For this performance, she was nominated for the César Award for Most Promising Actress. Vacth continues to be a mainstay in French cinema despite living a very private life away from social media, making her one of the most intriguing French actresses out there. She recently starred alongside Pierre Niney in the French riviera con artist film Mascarade (2022).
Stacy Martin
Stacy Martin is a stunning French-English actress. Her breakout performance came in Lars von Trier’s 2013 drama film Nymphomaniac, in which she played a younger version of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s role, Joe. Martin grew up in Paris. At seven years old, she went to Tokyo, Japan, where she resided with her family. After that, she came back to Paris. Next, she traveled to London; upon graduating high school, she pursued Media and Cultural Studies at London’s College of Communication while also modeling.
Martin began her acting endeavors in 2013 when she was only 23 years old. Her role as French film director Jean-Luc Godard’s former wife in the 60s period film Godard Mon Amour (2017) gained her international recognition. She promptly gained other roles in the industry. Martin is very well-known in her native France and other countries due to her talented performances. Most recently, she starred opposite Pierre Niney in the Nicole Garcia drama Lovers (2021).
Annabelle Belmondo
Annabelle Belmondo is a French-American actress brought up in California while spending lots of time in the south of France. She moved to Paris for a job after earning her bachelor’s degree in literary journalism and has been a Parisian since then. Marc Jacobs, Chloe, Tod’s, and Paco Rabanne, to name a few, were among the luxury brands with which she began her modeling career.
Belmondo has been shifting from modeling to acting over the past few years. She has roles in three future projects: American Night, an Italian movie with Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Emilie Hirsch; Madame Claude, a French thriller, and Dawn Chorus, a Swiss independent film. As the granddaughter of French New Wave film star Jean-Paul Belmondo, our expectations are fairly high!
Belmondo also spent time making music and producing a few of her tracks in 2020, and she produced music with La Femme. Annabelle is an environment enthusiast and animal lover who is also a skilled ballet dancer who has been into yoga since she was 15 and enjoys hiking, biking, dancing, and surfing.
Rebecca Marder
Rebecca Marder is a breakout French actress known for her role in the Olivier Dahan-directed biopic Simone Veil, A Woman of the Century (2021) about the French politician and women’s rights activist Simone Veil.
Her mother is a French theater journalist and her father is an American musician. She studied at the prestigious Conservatoire d’art dramatique de Paris and began acting in theater productions at the age of 20.
Marion Barbeau
Marion Barbeau is a ballet dancer turned actress. She has earned the Première danseuse title while dancing for the prestigious Paris Opera Ballet. In 2022, she starred in Rise, the story of a ballet dancer who inures herself and must make a new path, directed by Cédric Klapisch.
Dorcas Coppin
Dorcas Coppin is an up-and-coming French actress you might recognize on the screen of your next Air France flight. She catapulted to international fame after participating in the airline’s viral safety clip. Coppin has been featured in movies, television programs, and advertisements since then. In Colette (2018) she played the young Claudine. She is definitely an actress to keep an eye on!
