Sophie Marceau

Sophie Marceau — Biography

Born Sophie Danièle Sylvie Maupu in Paris on 17 November 1966, Sophie Marceau is the daughter of a truck driver and a shop assistant; her parents divorced when she was nine and later remarried each other. She was cast at just thirteen in Claude Pinoteau's La Boum, and its sequel La Boum 2 made her the first winner of the César for Most Promising Actress. Films such as L'Étudiante, Pacific Palisades, Fanfan and Revenge of the Musketeers established her as a star in Europe, and in 1991 she won the Molière Award for a stage role.

From 1985 to 2001 she was with director Andrzej Żuławski, with whom she had a son in 1995; she then had a six-year relationship with producer Jim Lemley, with whom she had a daughter in 2002. Moving into English-language film in the late 1990s, she gained worldwide recognition as Princess Isabelle in Braveheart and as Elektra King in The World Is Not Enough, alongside roles in Firelight and Anna Karenina. In 1996 she published the semi-autobiographical novel Menteuse; she turned director in 2002 with Speak to Me of Love, winning Best Director at the Montreal World Film Festival, and later directed Trivial and Mrs Mills. Her later acting work includes socially engaged films such as Arrêtez-moi, Jailbirds and Everything Went Fine. She was named an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2003 and revealed in 2015 that she had turned down the Legion of Honour.