Sunday, February 24, 2013

The Beauty of Retrospect: Isabelle Adjani

I'd like to feature a couple of retrospectives before I go to the next A-Z round of new subjects (and the latest stats), so tonight I present another look at Isabelle Adjani, France's greatest living actress whose name isn't Catherine Deneuve.


Isabelle Adjani has been very active since I first featured her in March 2008. In fact, in 2009, she appeared in her first theatrically released movie in six years - Skirt Day, in which she played a high school teacher who has to deal with bored students in a violent environment. It earned her her fifth César Award for Best Actress. (The Césars are the French equivalent of the Oscars.) In Skirt Day, her character takes her class hostage in an act of desperation to reach them. To Sir, With Love it is not.


Ms. Adjani's more recent movies include Mammuth (2010) and De Force (2011).  She plays the mother of a young, headstrong Indian woman in the Hindi film Ishkq in Paris, the release of which has been delayed repeatedly but, as of this writing, should be released some time in 2013.

Fun fact #1: Isabelle Adjani isn't ethnically French. She's half-Kabyle, as her father was an Algerian immigrant in France, and half-German.

Fun fact #2: She was romantically linked to Daniel Day-Lewis from 1989 to 1995.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...


"But sudden was the newborn day reveal’d:
A maiden came, in heavenly bright array,
Like the fair creatures of the poet’s lay
In realms of song. My yearning heart was heal’d..."