Early life and career

Huppert was born in Paris, the daughter of Annick Beau, an English teacher and Raymond Huppert, a safe manufacturer. Her father was born Jewish and converted to Catholicism; he was descended from immigrants from Hungary. She was raised in a western suburb of Ville-d'Avray. Huppert was encouraged by her mother to begin acting at a young age, and became a teenage star in Paris. She later attended Versailles Conservatoire, where she won a prize for her acting. She is also an alumna of the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art of Paris, CNSAD.

Huppert made her film debut in 1972 with Faustine et le bel été, though her television debut was in 1971. Her later appearance in the controversial Les Valseuses (1974) made her increasingly recognized by the public. Her international breakthrough came with La Dentelliere (1977), for which she won a BAFTA award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles. She made her American film debut in Michael Cimino's 1980 film Heaven's Gate, which was a notorious flop at the U.S. box office. Throughout the 1980s, Huppert continued to explore enigmatic and emotionally distant characters, most notably in Maurice Pialat's Loulou (1980), Godard's Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980), Diane Kurys' Coup de foudre (1983), and Claude Chabrol's Une Affaire de Femmes (1988).

Later career and recent credits

Huppert played a manic and homicidal post-office worker in Claude Chabrol's La Cérémonie (1995), with Sandrine Bonnaire, and continued her cinematic relationship with Chabrol in Rien ne va plus (1997), and Merci pour le chocolat (2000). She also appeared in Michael Haneke's 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 acting prize in Cannes. 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 is also an acclaimed stage actress, receiving five Molière Award nominations, including for the title role in a 2001 Paris production of Medea, directed by Jacques Lassalle, and at the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe in Paris, in the title role of a 2005 production of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. 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 (fr) and performed in French.

Isabelle Huppert was the President of the Jury at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, from 13 May to 24 May 2009. She has been Member of the Jury and Master of Ceremony in previous years, as well as winning the Best Actress Award twice. As president, she gave the Palme d'Or to The White Ribbon by the Austrian director Michael Haneke who has directed her in The Piano Teacher and Time of the Wolf.

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 award-winning Filipino director Brillante Mendoza. Huppert played the role of a kidnap victim in the hands of the separatist group, Abu Sayyaf.

In 2012, she starred in two films that competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival; Amour and In Another Country.

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. Then in summer of 2014, the production toured in New York as a part of the Lincoln Center Festival 2014, in New York City Center for 13 performances.

Personal life

Huppert has been married to writer, producer and director Ronald Chammah since 1982. They have three children including the actress Lolita Chammah with whom she acted in the film Copacabana.

Filmography

Main article: Isabelle Huppert filmography

Discography

• Madame Deshoulières (2001) with Jean-Louis Murat.

Awards and nominations

She has been nominated 15 times for a César Award, winning it in 1996 for her work in La Cérémonie.

She is one of only four women who have twice won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival: in 1978 for her role in Violette Nozière by Claude Chabrol (tied with Jill Clayburgh) and in 2001 for The Piano Teacher by Michael Haneke.

She is also one of only two women who have twice received the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival: in 1988 for her part in Une affaire de femmes (tied with Shirley MacLaine), and in 1995 for La Cérémonie (tied with her partner in the movie, Sandrine Bonnaire). Both films were directed by Claude Chabrol. Additionally, she received a Special Lion in 2005 for her role in Gabrielle.

Huppert was twice voted Best Actress at the European Film Awards: in 2001 for playing Erika Kohut in The Piano Teacher, and in 2002 with the entire cast of 8 Women (directed by François Ozon). The latter cast also won a Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution, at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival (Halle Berry won Best Actress at Berlin in 2002). She won the Best Actress award at the Montreal World Film Festival (in 2002 for Merci pour le chocolat), at the Moscow International Film Festival (in 1991 for Madame Bovary), at the Deutscher Filmpreis (in 1991 for Malina) and twice at the David di Donatello (in 1978 for La Dentellière and in 2001 for The Piano Teacher).

In 2008 she received the Stanislavsky Award for outstanding achievement in acting, and devotion to the principles of the Stanislavsky method.

She was made Chevalier (Knight) of the Ordre national du Mérite on 8 December 1994 and was promoted to Officier (Officer) in 2005.

She was made Chevalier (Knight) of the Légion d'honneur on 29 September 1999 and was promoted to Officier (Officer) in 2009.

BAFTA Film Awards

Year	Group	Award	Film	Result
1978	BAFTA Film Awards	Most Promising Newcomer	The Lacemaker (La Dentellière)	Won

César Awards

Year	Group	Award	Film	Result
1976	César Awards	Best Supporting Actress	Aloïse	Nominated
1978		Best Actress	The Lacemaker (La Dentellière)	Nominated
1979			Violette Nozière	Nominated
1981			Loulou	Nominated
1982			Coup de torchon	Nominated
1989			Story of Women (Une affaire de femmes)	Nominated
1995			La Séparation	Nominated
1996			La Cérémonie	Won
1999			L'École de la chair	Nominated
2001			Saint-Cyr	Nominated
2002			The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste)	Nominated
2003			8 Women (8 Femmes)	Nominated
2006			Gabrielle	Nominated
2013		Best Supporting Actress	Amour	Nominated
2016		Best Actress	Valley of Love	Nominated

Lumières Awards

Year	Group	Award	Film	Result
1996	Lumières Awards	Best Actress	La Cérémonie	Won
2001		Best Actress	Merci pour le chocolat	Won
2006		Best Actress	Gabrielle	Won
2007		Best Actress	Comedy of Power	Nominated
2016		Best Actress	Valley of Love	Nominated

Film festivals

Year	Group	Award	Film	Result
1978	Cannes Film Festival	Best Actress	Violette Nozière	Won
1988	Venice Film Festival	Best Actress (Volpi Cup)	Story of Women (Une affaire de femmes)	Won
1991	Moscow International Film Festival	Best Actress	Madame Bovary	Won
1995	Venice Film Festival	Best Actress (Volpi Cup)	La Cérémonie	Won
2001	Cannes Film Festival	Best Actress	The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste)	Won
2013	Manaki Film Festival	Special Golden Camera 300	Herself	Won

Molière Awards

Year	Group	Award	Play	Result
1989	Molière Awards	Best Actress	A Month in the Country (Un mois à la campagne)	Nominated
1994			Orlando: A Biography (Orlando)	Nominated
1995				Nominated
2001			Medea (Médée)	Nominated
2005			Hedda Gabler	Nominated

Other

Year	Group	Award	Film	Result
2001	European Film Awards	Best Actress	The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste)	Won
2002	European Film Awards	Best Actress (shared)	8 Women	Won
2002	Los Angeles Film Critics Association	Best Actress	The Piano Teacher	Nominated (2nd place)
	National Society of Film Critics	Best Actress	The Piano Teacher	Nominated (2nd place)
	New York Film Critics Circle	Best Actress	The Piano Teacher	Nominated (3rd place)
2013	London Film Critics Circle Awards	Supporting Actress of the Year	Amour	Nominated

Honorary awards

• 2006: Ibsen Centennial Commemoration Award
• 2008: 30th Moscow International Film Festival Stanislavsky Award
• 2009: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival Crystal Globe for Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema
• 2013: Manaki Brothers Film Festival Special Golden Camera 300
• 2014: Munich Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2016: Honorary Lumières Award

Reviews

David Thomson on Claude Chabrol's Madame Bovary: " has to rate as one of the most accomplished actresses in the world today, even if she seems short of the passion or agony of her contemporary, Isabelle Adjani". Stuart Jeffries of The Observer on The Piano Teacher: "This is surely one of the greatest performances of Huppert's already illustrious acting career, though it is one that is very hard to watch." Director, Michael Haneke: " has such professionalism, the way she is able to represent suffering. At one end you have the extreme of her suffering and then you have her icy intellectualism. No other actor can combine the two." Of her performance in 2011's Hidden Love, Roger Ebert said "Isabelle Huppert makes one good film after another.... she is fearless. Directors often depend on her gift for conveying depression, compulsion, egotism and despair. She can be funny and charming, but then so can a lot of actors. She is in complete command of a face that regards the void with blankness." In 2010, S.T. VanAirsdale described her as "arguably the world’s greatest screen actress".

[ Source: Wikipedia ]