Charlotte Gainsbourg

Charlotte Gainsbourg

Birth name: Charlotte Lucy Gainsbourg
Born: July 21, 1971
Age: 53
Birthplace: London, England, UK
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Biography

Charlotte Lucy Gainsbourg (born 21 July 1971) is a British-French actress and singer. She is the daughter of English actress Jane Birkin and French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. After making her musical debut with her father on the song "Lemon Incest" at the age of twelve, she released an album with her father at the age of fifteen. More than twenty years passed before she released three albums as an adult (5:55, IRM and Stage Whisper) to commercial and critical success. Gainsbourg has also appeared in many films, including several directed by Lars von Trier, and has received both a César Award and the Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award.

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Background

Gainsbourg was born in London, to English actress and singer Jane Birkin and French actor and singer-song writer Serge Gainsbourg. Gainsbourg was born at the height of her parents' fame as they had made headlines several years earlier with the sexually explicit song Je t'aime... moi non plus and by that point had become notorious for their turbulent relationship and multiple artistic collaborations. As a result her birth and childhood were well publicized.

Her maternal grandmother was actress Judy Campbell and her uncle is the screenwriter Andrew Birkin, who directed her in The Cement Garden. She is a cousin of theatre and opera director Sophie Hunter. Her father was Jewish and her mother is from a Protestant background. Gainsbourg attended École Active Bilingue Jeannine Manuel in Paris and Collège Alpin International Beau Soleil in Switzerland. French is Gainsbourg's first language, but she is also fluent in English.

Gainsbourg was raised in Paris alongside her half-sister from her mother's marriage to composer John Barry, Kate Barry, who died in 2013 after an accidental fall out a window. According to Birkin she and Gainsbourg were somewhat neglectful parents, often spending their nights going out to parties and drinking. She has a young brother, Lucien "Lulu" Gainsbourg, born in 1986 from her father's relationship with Bambou. On her father's side she also had two older siblings born from his second marriage to Françoise-Antoinette "Béatrice" Pancrazzi.

By 1980, her parents' relationship had dissolved and her mother left her father for the director Jacques Doillon. Her half sister Lou Doillon was born in 1982 as a result of the union. Gainsbourg would go on to work with her step-father in the film The Temptation of Isabelle in 1985 and later in Amoureuse in 1992 which also starred her real life partner Yvan Attal.

In 1987 she was the target of a bungled kidnapping.

After her parents split, Gainsbourg's father descended into alcoholism, eventually dying of a heart attack in 1991. Gainsbourg remained devoted to preserving his legacy and preserved his home, hoping to eventually turn it into a museum. She eventually abandoned the project and decided to maintain the house as a private residence.

On 5 September 2007, Gainsbourg was rushed to a Paris hospital where she underwent surgery for a cerebral hemorrhage. She had been experiencing headaches since a minor waterskiing accident in the United States several weeks earlier.

Career

Acting

Gainsbourg grew up on film sets as both of her parents were involved in the film industry. She stated that her mother was the one who pushed her into acting, believing that she wanted to be an actress and encouraging her to make her motion picture debut playing Catherine Deneuve's daughter in the film Paroles et musique (1984).

In 1986, Gainsbourg won a César Award for "Most Promising Actress" for L'effrontée. That same year Gainsbourg appeared in the film Charlotte for Ever about a man who develops incestuous desires for his teenage daughter after his wife dies. The film was the subject of great controversy as it was written and directed by Gainsbourg's father Serge Gainsbourg who also took on the role of Gainsbourg's father on screen. Additionally the film was released two years after Gainsbourg had released her debut single Lemon Incest which had similar themes and also was created and sung with her father Serge causing the press to speculate that the material was autobiographical.

In 1988 together with her mother she appeared in a set of films Kung Fu Master and the docu-drama Jane B. by Agnes V. both directed by Agnès Varda.

In 1993, Gainsbourg made her English speaking debut in The Cement Garden, written and directed by her uncle, Andrew Birkin. She made her stage debut in 1994 in David Mamet's Oleanna at the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Montparnasse. In 1996, Gainsbourg starred as the title character in Jane Eyre, a film adaption of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel.

In 2000, she won the César Award for "Best Supporting Actress" for the film La Bûche.

In 2003, Gainsbourg starred in 21 Grams, with Naomi Watts, Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro. In 2006, Gainsbourg appeared alongside Gael García Bernal in Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep. In 2007, she appeared as Claire in the Todd Haynes-directed Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There, also contributing a cover of the Dylan song "Just Like a Woman" to the film soundtrack. In 2009, she won the award for Best Actress at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival for the film Antichrist. Gainsbourg starred in the French/Australian production, The Tree, released in 2010, and in Lars von Trier's science fiction disaster film, Melancholia. She was on the jury for the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival in February 2012. In May 2012 Confession of a Child of the Century premiered, where she starred alongside the British musician Pete Doherty.

Gainsbourg collaborated with von Trier once again on his 2013 film Nymphomaniac, in which she plays the lead character. The five-and-a-half-hour film depicts the life of a sex addict from youth to middle age. When asked about the nature of the role, Gainsbourg responded, "The sex scenes weren't so hard. For me it was all the masochistic scenes. Those were embarrassing and, yes, a little humiliating."

Music

Gainsbourg made her musical debut with her father on the song "Lemon Incest" in 1984. The song was incredibly controversial due to lyrics that seemed to imply an incestuous pedophiliac relationship between a father and daughter that was sung by Gainsbourg and her real life father Serge causing people to believe the material was autobiographical. Gainsbourg, who was 13 at the time of the song's release, later stated that she had just begun boarding school and was therefore unaware of the controversy regarding the song until she was much older.

In 1986 she released her debut album Charlotte for Ever, which was produced by her father.

In 2000, Gainsbourg was featured on the Madonna album Music on the track "What It Feels Like For A Girl". There is a lengthy spoken intro by Gainsbourg, taken from the film The Cement Garden, which inspired the title of the song. The track was further remixed for the single version of this song in 2001, with Gainsbourg's The Cement Garden speech repeated during the song.

In 2004, she sang a duet with French pop star Étienne Daho on his single "If".

In 2006, Gainsbourg released her second album 5:55 to critical acclaim and commercial success, reaching the top spot on the French charts and achieving platinum status in the country. In the UK, the album was moderately successful, reaching #78 (The single "The Songs That We Sing" only made #129). Gainsbourg attributed the twenty year break between her debut album and 5:55 as a result of her father's death and her reluctance to explore a musical career without his presence.

In late 2009, Gainsbourg released her third studio album, IRM, which was produced by Beck. One of the influential factors in the album's creative process was her time spent filming Antichrist. Gainsbourg's head injury in 2007 influenced the title of the album "IRM", an abbreviation for the French translation of "magnetic resonance imaging". While receiving a brain scan, she began to think about music. "When I was inside that machine," she said, "it was an escape to think about music. It's rhythm. It was very chaotic."

Her song "Heaven Can Wait" was chosen as the Starbucks iTunes Pick of the Week on 2 March 2010. Her song "Trick Pony" appeared at the beginning of the Grey's Anatomy episode "Perfect Little Accident" (Season 6, Episode 16/airdate: 25 February 2010), is featured on the FIFA 11 soundtrack and was used in the 2012 Teleflora Super Bowl advertisement featuring supermodel Adriana Lima.

In 2011, Gainsbourg released the double album Stage Whisper, a collection of unreleased songs from IRM and live tracks. In 2013, Gainsbourg released a cover version of the song "Hey Joe", recorded with Beck, for the soundtrack of the film Nymphomaniac, in which she is the lead actress. Her career in music influentiates a lot of artists, such as Tove Lo, who cites the simplicity and quirky lyrical content Charlotte's IRM as the main inspiration behind her career in music and said that it "opened a new world" for her sound-wise.

Since 2014, Gainsbourg has been supporting the Hear the World Foundation as ambassador. In her role she is advocating for equal opportunities and better quality of life for people with hearing loss. She is featured in the Hear the World Calendar 2014, sold with all proceeds benefitting the foundation’s projects.

Personal life

Gainsbourg's longtime partner is French-Israeli actor/director Yvan Attal whom she met on the set of the 1991 film Aux yeux du monde. Gainsbourg and Attal are not married and Gainsbourg has attributed her reluctance to marry to the fact that her parents never married. Attal publicly proposed to Gainsbourg on 19 June 2013 during an awards ceremony when he received the French National Order of Merit. However in April 2014 Attal confirmed that they were still unwed with no plans to officially marry. Together they have three children: a son, Ben (b. 1997), and daughters Alice (b. 2002) and Joe (b. 2011).

In 2012 Pete Doherty alleged that he and Gainsbourg had had a fling on the set of Confession of a Child of the Century and she had briefly moved from Paris to London in order to be with him.

Filmography

Year Film Role Notes
1984 Paroles et musique Charlotte Marker
1985 La tentation d'Isabelle L'enfant
1985 L'Effrontée Charlotte Castang César Award for Most Promising Actress
1986 Charlotte for Ever Charlotte
1988 Le Petit Amour Lucy aka Kung-fu master!
1988 Jane B. par Agnès V. La fille de J. Agnès Varda film
1988 The Little Thief Janine Castang aka La petite voleuse
Nominated — César Award for Best Actress
1990 Il sole anche di notte Matilda
1991 Merci la vie Camille Pelleveau
1991 Aux yeux du monde Juliette Mangin Éric Rochant film
1992 Amoureuse Marie aka The Lover
1993 The Cement Garden Julie
1994 Grosse Fatigue Herself aka Dead Tired
1996 Jane Eyre Jane Eyre
1996 Anna Oz Anna Oz Éric Rochant film
1996 Love, etc. Marie Marion Vernoux film
Nominated — César Award for Best Actress
1999 The Intruder Catherine Girard
1999 La Bûche Milla Robin aka Season's Beatings
César Award for Best Supporting Actress
2000 Passionnément Alice Almeida aka Passionately
2000 Nuremberg Marie Claude Vaillant-Couturier Miniseries
2000 Les Misérables Fantine Miniseries
2001 Félix et Lola Lola Patrice Leconte film
2001 My Wife Is an Actress Charlotte aka Ma Femme est une actrice
2002 La merveilleuse odyssée de l'idiot Toboggan Voice
2003 21 Grams Mary Rivers
2004 Une star internationale Herself Short film
2004 Ils Se Marièrent et Eurent Beaucoup d'Enfants Gabrielle aka ...And They Lived Happily Ever After
2005 L'un reste, l'autre part Judith aka One Stays, the Other Leaves
2005 Lemming Bénédicte Getty
2006 Nuovomondo Lucy Reed aka The Golden Door
2006 Prête-moi ta main Emma aka I Do/Rent a Wife
Nominated — César Award for Best Actress
Nominated — Globes de Cristal Award for Best Actress
2006 La Science des rêves Stéphanie aka The Science of Sleep
2007 I'm Not There Claire
2008 The City of Your Final Destination Arden Langdon
2009 Antichrist She Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award
Bodil Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
Sant Jordi Award for Best Foreign Actress
Nominated — Scream Award for Best Actress
Nominated — European Film Award for Best Actress
Nominated — Robert Festival for Best Actress
2009 Persécution Sonia
2010 The Tree Dawn Nominated — César Award for Best Actress
2011 Melancholia Claire Robert Festival for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated — Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated — Bodil Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated — European Film Award for Best Actress
2012 Confession of a Child of the Century Brigitte
2013 Nymphomaniac Joe Bodil Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
Nominated — European Film Award for Best Actress
2014 Jacky in Women's Kingdom La colonelle
2014 Every Thing Will Be Fine Kate
2014 Samba Alice Nominated—Lumières Award for Best Actress
2014 Three Hearts Sylvie Nominated—Lumières Award for Best Actress
2014 Incompresa Madre
2015 Oppenheimer Strategies Filming
2016 Independence Day: Resurgence Dr. Catherine Marceaux Filming
2016 True Crimes Filming
2017 The Snowman Filming

Discography

Year Album details Peak chart positions Certifications
FRA
AUT
BE (Vl)
BE (Wa)
GER
NLD
SWE
SWI
UK
US
1986 Charlotte for Ever
  • Released: 1986
  • Label:
- - - - - - - - - -
2006 5:55
  • Released: 28 August 2006
  • Label:
1 41 15 2 38 99 57 12 - 196
  • FRA: Platinum
2009 IRM
  • Released: 4 December 2009
  • Label:
4 - 35 8 - - 46 28 62 69
2011 Stage Whisper
  • Released: 13 December 2011
  • Label:
84 - - 98 89 - - - - -

Awards and nominations

César Award

Year Category Nominated work Result
1985 Most Promising Actress L'Effrontée Won
1988 Best Actress The Little Thief Nominated
1996 Best Actress Love, etc. Nominated
2000 Best Supporting Actress La Bûche Won
2006 Best Actress Prête-moi ta main Nominated
Year Awards Category Recipient Outcome
2009 Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Antichrist Won
Bodil Award Best Actress Won
Sant Jordi Award Best Foreign Actress Nominated
Scream Award Best Actress Nominated
European Film Award Best Actress Nominated
Robert Awards Best Actress Nominated
2010 César Awards Best Actress The Tree Nominated
Robert Awards Best Supporting Actress Melancholia Won
2011 Saturn Awards Best Supporting Actress Nominated
Bodil Award Best Supporting Actress Nominated
European Film Award Best Actress Nominated
2013 European Film Award Best Actress Nymphomaniac Nominated
Bodil Awards Best Actress Won
2015 Lumières Award Best Actress Samba/Three Hearts Nominated

Decorations

  • Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters (2016)

[ Source: Wikipedia ]


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