Audrey Tautou

Audrey Tautou (1976) is a French actress known for her gamine beauty and elfin charm. She received critical acclaim for her feature film debut in Vénus beauté (institut)/Venus Beauty Institute (1999), and won the César Award for Most Promising Actress. She made her international breakthrough with her starring role as Amélie in the cinema hit Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain/Amélie (2001). For that, she was nominated for a César and a BAFTA Award. Playing mainly in French films, Tautou also appeared in the British thriller Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and the American blockbuster The Da Vinci Code (2006).


British postcard by Odeon. Photo: Momentum Pictures. Audrey Tautou in Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001).


French postcard by Warner Bros, France / Tapioca Films / TF1 Films Production. Audrey Tautou on the English poster for Un long dimanche de fiançailles/A Very Long Engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2004).


Italian promocard by The Cult Advertising, no. PC 6390. Image: Imagine / Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures. Audrey Tautou in The Da Vinci Code (Ron Howard, 2006). Caption: Audrey Tautou is Sophie. 19 May 2006, the secret will be revealed.


Swiss postcard by Frenetic. Photo: Frenetic Films. Audrey Tautou in De vrais mensonges/Beautiful Lies (Pierre Salvadori, 2010).


Swiss postcard by Frenetic.ch. Photo: Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou and Omar Sy in L'écume des jours/Mood Indigo (Michel Gondry, 2013).

Amélie

Audrey Justine Tautou was born in Beaumont, France in 1976. She was the daughter of a dental surgeon, Bernard Tautou, and a teacher, Évelyne Tautou, also a former deputy mayor of Montluçon. She spent her childhood and teenage years in Montluçon with her two sisters and brother. Audrey, reportedly named after Audrey Hepburn, discovered early in life that playing comedy suited her and she trained at Cours Florent in Paris.

She began her acting career with several television movies in the late 1990s and received the award for best young actress at the Jeune Comedien de Cinema Festival in Béziers in 1998. Tautou won a talent search contest sponsored by Canal+, a French media company in 1999.

Thanks in part to her striking appearance and girlish looks, she caught the eye of director Tonie Marshall, who gave the 22-years-old actress the role of a naive salon worker in her film Vénus Beauté (institut)/Venus Beauty Institute (Tonie Marshall, 1999). For this film, she received the Prix Suzanne Bianchetti as her country's most promising young film actress. In 2000 she was a fixture in French cinemas, appearing in Épouse-moi/Marry Me (Harriet Marin, 2000), Voyous voyelle/Pretty Devils (Serge Meynard, 2000), Le Libertin/The Libertine (Gabriel Aghion, 2000) with Vincent Pérez, and Le Battement d’ailes du papillon/Happenstance (Laurent Firtode, 2000).

The following year, she made her international breakthrough with her starring role in Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain/Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001). In this romantic fable, she starred as a shy and lonely waitress who concocts elaborate schemes to make others happy and in the process falls in love. Grossing over $33 million in limited theatrical release, the film became the top-grossing French-language movie of all time in the United States and scored five Oscar nominations, including one for best foreign-language film. It also earned Tautou a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) nomination for best actress and a César nomination.

In 2002 she appeared opposite Romain Duris in the ensemble comedy L’Auberge espagnole/The Spanish Apartment (Cédric Klapisch, 2002) about foreign exchange students. There were two sequels, Les Poupées russes/Russian Dolls (Cédric Klapisch, 2005) and Casse-tête chinois/Chinese Puzzle (Cédric Klapisch, 2013), which followed the characters as they aged.


Chinese postcard. Photo: Momentum Pictures. Audrey Tautou in Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001).


Australian postcard by AvantCard, no. 6148, Postcard 2 in a series of 6. Photo: Dendy. Audrey Tatou in Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain/Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001). Caption: Amelie lives in Paris and in a world of her own. She cultivates a taste for small pleasures. Like skimming stones on St. Martin's Canal. And cracking crème brulée with a teaspoon.


Australian postcard by AvantCard, no. 6149, Postcard 3 in a series of 6. Photo: Dendy. Audrey Tatou in Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain/Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001). Caption: Amelie lives in Paris and in a world of her own. Some Fridays, Amelie goes to the movies. She likes looking back at people's faces in the dark. Amelie notices the shy people always laugh the loudest.


Australian postcard by AvantCard, no. 6150, Postcard 4 in a series of 6. Photo: Dendy. Audrey Tatou in Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain/Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001). Caption: Amelie lives in Paris and in a world of her own. She tries hard to fix other people's messy lives. But what about her own life? Who'll fix that?


Australian postcard by AvantCard, no. 6152, Postcard 6 in a series of 6. Photo: Dendy. Audrey Tatou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Jamel Debbouze and Urbain Cancelier in Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain/Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001). Caption: Amelie lives in Paris and in a world of her own. But maybe her thoughts are with someone else. Someone she's known since always. Could Amelie be falling in love?

Coco Chanel

Audrey Tautou mainly acts in French films, including the musical Pas sur la bouche/Not on the Lips (Alain Resnais, 2003). Tautou reteamed with Jeunet for the César award-winning drama Un Long Dimanche de fiançailles/A Very Long Engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2004). In this ambitious international adaptation of Sébastien Japrisot's novel of the same name, she played a woman searching for her lost fiancé after World War I.

She made her English language debut in the British thriller Dirty Pretty Things (Stephen Frears, 2002) and later appeared in Nowhere to Go but Up (Amos Kollek, 2003). She also played agent Sophie Neveu alongside Tom Hanks in the American blockbuster The Da Vinci Code (Ron Howard, 2006), an adaptation of Dan Brown's novel. In both, she speaks English.

Soon thereafter she returned to the more intimate French films that made her famous. Subsequent movies included the well-received romantic comedies Hors de prix/Priceless (Pierre Salvadori, 2006) and Ensemble, c’est tout/Hunting and Gathering (Claude Berri, 2007). In 2009 she portrayed French fashion designer Coco Chanel in the biopic Coco avant Chanel/Coco Before Chanel (Anne Fontaine, 2009). That year, Tautou was also Nicole Kidman's successor as the face of Chanel No. 5 perfume in a short film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and a photo campaign by Dominique Issermann. In 2012, Tautou was in turn succeeded by American actor Brad Pitt.

In 2010, she took to the stage to star in her first play, 'Une maison de poupée' (A Doll's House), written by Henrik Ibsen. Directed by Michel Fau, it was performed at the Théâtre de la Madeleine. In the cinema, she evinced a widow who is drawn out of mourning by an oafish coworker in La Délicatesse/Delicacy (Stéphane and David Foenkinos, 2011) and played the murderous title heroine in Thérèse Desqueyroux/Thérèse (Claude Miller, 2012), an adaptation of the François Mauriac novel. Tautou’s character, a woman with a water lily growing in her lung, was the locus of Michel Gondry’s absurdist fantasy L’Écume des jours/Mood Indigo (Michel Gondry, 2013). She also played the mother of a talented young artist in Gondry’s Microbe et gasoil/Microbe & Gasoline (Michel Gondry, 2015) and voiced a journalist in the animated fantasy Phantom Boy (Jean-Loup Felicioli, Alain Gagnol, 2015).

Since 2015, she has kept a low profile. However, she incidentally appeared in films such as L’Odyssée/The Odyssey (Jérôme Salle, 2016), a biopic about Jacques Cousteau, the family comedy Santa & Cie/Christmas & Co. (Alain Chabat, 2017) and En liberte!/The Trouble with You (Pierre Salvadori, 2018), in which she played the wife of a man wrongfully imprisoned. She also played a free-spirited hairdresser in the crime comedy The Jesus Rolls (John Turturro, 2019), a remake of Les valseuses/Going Places (Bertrand Blier, 1974). She was one of the few French actresses to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in June 2004. Audrey Tautou has modelled for the likes of Montblanc and L'Oréal. Until December 2008, Audrey Tautou was the partner of rock and pop singer-songwriter Matthieu Chedid, known by the pseudonym M. In 2019, she adopted a Vietnamese baby girl.


French postcard by Sonis, noo. C. 1586. Image: Warner Brothers. Gaspard Ulliel and Audrey Tautou on the English poster for Un long dimanche de fiançailles/A Very Long Engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2004).


French postcard by Warner Bros, France / Tapioca Films / TF1 Films Production. Gaspard Ulliel and Audrey Tautou on the English poster for Un long dimanche de fiançailles/A Very Long Engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2004).


French postcard by Warner Bros, France / Tapioca Films / TF1 Films Production. Scene from Un long dimanche de fiançailles/A Very Long Engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2004).


French postcard by Warner Bros, France / Tapioca Films / TF1 Films Production. Poster by Laurent Lufroy. Photo: Bruno Calvo. Publicity still for Un long dimanche de fiançailles/A Very Long Engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2004).


French postcard by Warner Bros, France / Tapioca Films / TF1 Films Production. Poster by Laurent Lufroy. Photo: Bruno Calvo. Audrey Tautou and Jean-Pierre Jeunet during the shooting of Un long dimanche de fiançailles/A Very Long Engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2004).


Swiss postcard by Frenetic.ch. Photo: Audrey Tautou and Romain Duris in L'écume des jours/Mood Indigo (Michel Gondry, 2013).

Sources: Britannica, Wikipedia (Dutch, French and English) and IMDb.