Isabelle Huppert

Huppert made her television debut in 1971 with Le Prussien, and her film debut in Nina Companeez's romantic comedy Faustine et le Bel Été (1972). The film was shown Out of Competition at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. Also that year she played Annie Smith in Alain Levent's adventure film The Bar at the Crossing and Marite in Claude Sautet's romance drama César and Rosalie with the former premiering at the Berlin International Film Festival. She made her theatre debut playing Lucile in Les Précieuses ridicules at the Comédie-Française in Paris from 1971 to 1972. Later that year she acted in A Hunger Artist at National Theatre Daniel Sorano in Paris followed by a run at the Shiraz Arts Festival.

In 1974 she acted in Alain Robbe-Grillet's art film Successive Slidings of Pleasure and Rachel Weinberg's fantasy film L'Ampélopède. She also gained notoriety for her later appearance as Suzanne in Bertrand Blier's controversial sex comedy Les Valseuses (1974). Huppert acted alongside Gérard Depardieu and Jeanne Moreau. Vincent Canby of The New York Times panned the film writing, "It's not very invigorating to see so much talent squandered on such foolish mixed-up romanticism."[14] The role made her increasingly recognized by the public.

The following year she acted in Yves Boisset's drama The Common Man (1975) which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. That same year starred in the American action thriller Rosebud (1975) directed by Otto Preminger. She acted opposite Peter O'Toole and Richard Attenborough. She also starred in the title role in the drama film Aloïse which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1976 she acted in Bertrand Tavernier's The Judge and the Assassin and Christine Lipinska's I Am Pierre Riviere.

Her international breakthrough came with her performance in Claude Goretta's La Dentelliere (1977),[15] for which she won a BAFTA award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles. Critic Roger Ebert praised her performance writing, "The movie’s performances are wonderfully subtle. Huppert, as Pomme, is good at the very difficult task of projecting the inner feelings of a character whose whole personality is based on the concealment of feeling".[16] The following year she won acclaim playing the title role Claude Chabrol's crime drama Violette Nozière (1978) winning the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress. It was the first of seven collaborations she would have with director Chabrol. Ebert wrote, "Huppert's performance, which is so assured, so complex it's hard to believe she worked this transformation in character after The Lacemaker.[17]

She made her American film debut in Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate (1980), which opened to poor reviews and was a box office failure; decades later, the film has been reassessed, with some critics considering it an overlooked masterpiece.[18] Also that year she starred in Maurice Pialat's Loulou (1980) where she reunited with Gérard Depardieu. Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised her performance writing, "Miss Huppert does a fine job of seeming exotic, vague, dazzling and also, somehow, unremarkable - all of this at the same time. The performances are much sharper than the film is as a whole."[19] Also in 1980 she acted in Jean-Luc Godard's Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980).

Throughout the 1980s, Huppert continued to explore enigmatic and emotionally distant characters, most notably in Diane Kurys' Coup de foudre (1983) directed by Bertrand Tavernier. The film was adapted from Jim Thompson's pulp novel Pop. 1280. Huppert earned a César Award for Best Actress nomination for her performance. She acted in Curtis Hanson's neo-noir thriller The Bedroom Window (1987) acting opposite Steve Guttenberg and Elizabeth McGovern.[20] She won acclaim for her role in Claude Chabrol's Une Affaire de Femmes (1988). In 1994, Huppert collaborated with American director Hal Hartley on Amateur, one of her few English-language performances since Heaven's Gate.

She won acclaim for her role in La Séparation (1994) with David Parkinson of British Film Institute writing, "Her distinctive talent for suppressing suffering is readily evident in Christian Vincent’s excruciating study of her slowly disintegrating relationship with Daniel Auteuil, as Huppert imparts chilling intimacy to a withdrawn hand, an unanswering gaze, a treacherous silence and a careless word in conveying the pain of falling out of love."[21] She portrayed a manic and homicidal post-office worker in Claude Chabrol's La Cérémonie (1995) for which she won the César Award for Best Actress and the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. Huppert continued her cinematic relationship with Chabrol in Rien ne va plus (1997) and Merci pour le Chocolat (2000).

Huppert on stage in 2006

Huppert made her first collaboration with Michael Haneke in his film The Piano Teacher (2001), which is based on a novel of the same name (Die Klavierspielerin) by Austrian author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004, Elfriede Jelinek. In this film, she played a piano teacher named Erika Kohut, who becomes involved with a young pianist and ladies' man, Walter Klemmer. Regarded as one of her most impressive turns, her performance netted the 2001 Best Actress prize in Cannes. David Denby of The New Yorker praised her performance writing, "Much of her best acting is no more than a flicker of consciousness, barely visible around the edges of the mask. Yet she gives a classic account of repression and sexual hypocrisy, unleashing the kind of rage that the great Bette Davis".[22]

In 2002 she acted in the dark comedy musical film 8 Women directed by François Ozon. Jonathan Cruiel of The San Francisco Chronicle praised her performance writing, "Huppert has a reputation for her intense portrayals, and in 8 Women, she steals every scene she's in as the uptight, melodramatic, bespectacled aunt."[23] In 2004, she starred in Christophe Honoré's Ma Mère as Hélène with Louis Garrel. Here, Huppert plays an attractive middle-aged mother who has an incestuous relationship with her teenage son. Ma Mère was based on a novel by Georges Bataille. 2004 also saw her star opposite Dustin Hoffman in David O. Russell's I Heart Huckabees. Huppert has worked in several countries since her debut. She worked in Italy (with directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Mauro Bolognini, Marco Ferreri and Marco Bellocchio), in Russia (with Igor Minaiev), in Central Europe (with Werner Schroeter, Andrzej Wajda, Ursula Meier, Michael Haneke, Márta Mészáros and Aleksandar Petrović) and in Asia (with Hong Sang-soo, Brillante Mendoza and Rithy Panh).

Huppert is also an acclaimed stage actress, receiving seven Molière Award nominations, including for the titular role in a 2001 Paris production of Medea, directed by Jacques Lassalle,[24] and in 2005, at the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe in Paris, in the title role of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler.[25] Later that year, she toured the United States in a Royal Court Theatre production of Sarah Kane's theatrical piece 4.48 Psychosis. This production was directed by Claude Régy and performed in French.[26] Huppert returned to the New York stage in 2009 to perform in Heiner Müller's Quartett.[27] In 2009 she starred in the Claire Denis film White Material. Sura Wood of The Associated Press declared, "She’s helped immeasurably by an astringent, fully committed performance from her leading lady, a gaunt, impossibly resolute Isabelle Huppert".[28]

Huppert at the 42nd César Awards

Huppert was the President of the Jury at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, in May 2009.[29] She had been s Member of the Jury and Master of Ceremony in previous years, as well as winning the Best Actress Award twice. As president, she and her jury awarded the Palme d'Or to The White Ribbon by the Austrian director Michael Haneke,[30] who has directed her in The Piano Teacher and Time of the Wolf.[31] Huppert starred in the 11th-season finale of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit which aired on 19 May 2010. In September 2010, the Philippine Daily Inquirer announced that she had been cast in the film Captive by Filipino director Brillante Mendoza. Huppert played one of the hostages of the Dos Palmas kidnappings.[32]

In 2012, she starred in two films that competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival: Michael Haneke's Amour and Hong Sang-soo's In Another Country, with the former winning the top prize.[33][34] In 2013, she co-starred in Sydney Theatre Company's The Maids by Jean Genet, with Cate Blanchett and Elizabeth Debicki and directed by Benedict Andrews in a new English translation by Andrews and Andrew Upton. In August 2014, the production toured in New York as a part of the Lincoln Center Festival.[35][36] Marilyn Stasio of Variety wrote of Blanchett and Huppert's performances, "Blanchett gives a dynamic performance as Claire, the melodramatic sister, who flies into a fit at the least provocation. Huppert plays Solange as the smarter, more subtle, more bitterly ironic observer."[37] She continued acting in films such as The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2013), Macadam Stories (2015), and Louder Than Bombs (2015).

In 2016, she starred in two films that received widespread critical acclaim: Mia Hansen-Løve's Things to Come, which premiered at the Berlinale, and Paul Verhoeven's Elle, which premiered at Cannes. In Elle she plays a woman who was raped by an intruder. Nick James of The British Film Institute wrote, "Isabelle Huppert gives one of the most riveting performances of her career...refusing to play the victim in a challenging, twisty thriller that seeks to subvert the expectations of the traditional revenge drama".[38] Among other awards and nominations, she won the National Society of Film Critics Award, New York Film Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress for both films.[39] For her performance in Elle, Huppert won several awards, including the Golden Globe Award, César Award for Best Actress, Gotham Independent Film Award, and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Actress. In addition, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress.

In 2016, Huppert starred in Krzysztof Warlikowski's stage production of Phèdre(s), which toured Europe as well as BAM in New York.[40] Katie Baker of The Daily Beast wrote, "Huppert inhabits Phaedra—or Phèdre, for the play is in French with subtitles—for the full 3½ hours with such magnetic force that whatever faults the show has pale next to her raw vitality."[41] In 2017, she was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize. On that occasion she performed with Jeremy Irons Correspondence 1944–1959 Readings from the epistles between Albert Camus and Maria Casares, and a special creation of Harold Pinter's Ashes to Ashes, at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.[42] In 2019 she played the title role in Florian Zeller's play The Mother acting opposite Chris Noth at the Atlantic Theatre Company in New York. The Guardian praised Huppert's performance but criticized the production.[43] Marilyn Stasio of Variety, "In the end, this turns out to be an upsetting play rather than an engaging one, and if it weren’t for Huppert’s mesmerizing performance, it might send you out of the theater and screaming into the night."[44]

In 2018 she acted as herself in the French comedy series Call My Agent! and as Jacqueline in Matthew Weiner's Amazon Prime series The Romanoffs. During this time she has acted in Michael Haneke's Happy End (2017), Neil Jordan's Greta (2018), Ira Sachs' Frankie (2019), Jerzy Skolimowski's EO (2021), and Anthony Fabian's Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022).