Marie-christine Barrault Biography

CIVIL STATUS
Profession Actress
Nationality Frenchwoman
Born 21 March 1944 (Paris – France)
BIOGRAPHY
After a year of higher studies in Literature, Marie-Christine Barrault entered the Cours Simon in 1963 and was admitted to the Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique in 1964. Until 1968, she devoted herself exclusively to the theatre, under the auspices of her uncle, the illustrious Jean-Louis Barrault, and Maurice Bejart. She took her first steps in the cinema in 1969, when Eric Rohmer chose her to play, alongside Jean-Louis Trintignant, the role of a little Catholic provincial girl in My Night at Maud’s.

In 1970, she co-starred with Pierre Richard in Le Distrait. She collaborated again with Rohmer on L’Amour l’après-midi, whom she reunited with in 1978 on the set of Perceval le Gallois The immense success of Cousin, cousine (particularly in the United States), in 1975, brought her consecration: she was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actress. After André Delvaux’s Woman Between Dog and Wolf (1979), she decided to give a new impetus to her career by moving to the United States. Woody Allen then gave her the role of Isobel in Stardust Memories, which he had written especially for her.

With Les Mots pour le dire, Marie-Christine Barrault seeks to get rid of the image of a wise young girl she has left behind since My Night at Maud’s, by accepting the role of an obnoxious mother. Then that of a stupid and vulgar villager in Andrzej Wajda’s A Love in Germany. During the 1980s, she played roles in a wide variety of registers under the guidance of leading filmmakers: a moon in Manoel de Oliveira’s The Satin Shoe, or the character of Madame Verdurin in Volker Schlöndorff’s adaptation of Swann’s Love.

Married to producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier, she divorced in 1990 to remarry Roger Vadim, to whom she remained faithful until his death in 2000. For the past fifteen years, Marie-Christine Barrault has become rarer on the big screen, devoting herself mainly to projects for television, which offered her beautiful roles (Marie Curie, une femme honorable in 1990) and the theatre. The cinema continues to solicit her, as in 1994 with Bonsoir by Jean-Pierre Mocky and La Dilettante in 1999. In 2007, she co-starred in La Disparue de Deauville alongside Christophe Lambert, Sophie Marceau and Robert Hossein.

Marie-Christine Barrault continues to work for French cinema, but with a particular interest in supporting roles as matriarchs: she is Annie, Chiara Mastroianni’s mother in Christophe Honoré’s Non ma fille, tu n’iras pas danser (2009), the mother who dies of a heart attack in Le Grand Méchant Loup (2011), Emmanuelle Devos’ moralistic mother in La Vie domestique (2013) or the grandmother of a runaway girl in Je m’appelle Hmmmm… (2014). She then starred in Brice Cauvin’s L’Art de la fugue (2014), alongside Agnès Jaoui, Laurent Lafitte and Guy Marchand.