Tautou, Audrey

(1978- )

   Actress. After acting in films made for television in the mid-1990s, Tautou entered the cinema with a break-through role in Tonie Marshall's Venus Beauté (Institut) (1999). Her performance won her the César for Most Promising New Actress in 2000. She played the lead in Triste à mourir (1999), a short fiction film by Alexandre Billon. She subsequently landed leading roles in Serge Meynard's Voyous Voyelles (2000) and Laurent Firode's Le Battement d'ailes du papillon (2000). She also played supporting roles in Harriet Marin's Épouse-moi (2000) and Gabriel Aghion's Le libertin (2000).

   In 2002, she received a Lumière Award and a César nomination for Best Actress in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001), a film that launched her international stardom. She subsequently starred in Pascale Bailly's Dieu est grand, je suis toute petite (2001) and Laetitia Colombani's A la folie, pas du tout (2002), and she then played supporting roles in Cédric Klapisch's L'Auberge espagnole (2002) and Claire Devers's Les marins perdus (2002). She has acted in two Anglophone films to date: British filmmaker Steven Frears's Dirty Pretty Things and Amos Kollek's Happy End. She ventured into musical comedy with Alain Resnais's Pas sur la bouche (2003) before pairing again with Jeunet to star in his feature Un long dimanche de fiançailles (2004). In 2006, she appeared alongside Jean Reno and Tom Hanks in Ron Howard's highly controversial film The Da Vinci Code.

   Historical Dictionary of French Cinema by Dayna Oscherwitz & Mary Ellen Higgins