Isabelle Huppert

Acting

Isabelle Huppert

Born 1953-03-16 · Parc Montsouris, Paris, France

Isabelle Anne Madeleine Huppert (born 16 March 1953) is a French actress. Described as "one of the best actresses in the world", she is known for her portrayals of cold and disdainful characters devoid of morality. Nominated for a record sixteen César Awards, she has won two. Among other accolades, she has received six Lumières Award nominations, more than any other person, and won four. In 2020, The New York Times ranked her second on its list of the greatest actors of the 21st century. Huppert's first César nomination was for the 1975 film Aloïse. In 1978, she won the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer for The Lacemaker. She went on to win two Best Actress awards at the Cannes Film Festival, for Violette Nozière (1978) and The Piano Teacher (2001), as well as two Volpi Cups for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival, for Story of Women (1988) and La Cérémonie. Her other films in France include Loulou (1980), La Séparation (1994), 8 Women (2002), Gabrielle (2005), Amour (2012), and Things to Come (2016). Among international film's most prolific actresses, Huppert has worked in Italy, Russia, Central Europe, and in Asia. Her English-language films include: Heaven's Gate (1980), The Bedroom Window (1987), I Heart Huckabees (2004), The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2013), Louder Than Bombs (2015), Greta (2018), and Frankie (2019). In 2016, Huppert garnered international acclaim for her performance in Elle, which earned her a Golden Globe Award, an Independent Spirit Award and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also won Best Actress awards from the National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, for both Elle and Things to Come. Also a prolific stage actress, Huppert is the most nominated actress for the Molière Award, with seven nominations. She made her London stage debut in the title role of the play Mary Stuart in 1996, and her New York stage debut in a 2005 production of 4.48 Psychosis. She returned to the New York stage in 2009 to perform in Heiner Müller's Quartett, and in 2014 to star in a Sydney Theatre Company production of The Maids. In 2019, Huppert starred in Florian Zeller's The Mother at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York. Description above from the Wikipedia article Isabelle Huppert, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Acting credits

The Piano Teacher poster
7.3

Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.

The Piano Teacher

2001

The Richest Woman in the World poster
6.2

An elderly billionaire woman gives hundreds of millions of euros to a younger gay artist she is close to. Her daughter files a complaint for abuse of a vulnerable person and a scandal erupts.

The Richest Woman in the World

2025

Going Places poster
6.7

Two whimsical, aimless thugs harass and assault women, steal, murder, and alternately charm, fight, or sprint their way out of trouble. They take whatever the bourgeoisie holds dear, whether it’s cars, peace of mind, or daughters. Marie-Ange, a jaded, passive hairdresser, joins them as lover, cook, and mother confessor. She’s on her own search for seemingly unattainable sexual pleasure.

Going Places

1974

Amour poster
7.8

Georges and Anne are in their eighties. They are cultivated, retired music teachers. Their daughter, who is also a musician, lives abroad with her family. One day, Anne has a stroke, and the couple's bond of love is severely tested.

Amour

2012

Greta poster
6.5

A young woman returns a lonely widow’s lost purse, leading to an unlikely relationship between the two — until the young woman discovers the widow might not be all that she seems.

Greta

2019

Amateur poster
6.2

A man wakes up in an alley, bleeding and with no memory of who he is. He stumbles into a coffee shop and is befriended by a charitable ex-nun who is failing in her attempts to write marketable pornography.

Amateur

1994

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris poster
7.3

A 1950s London cleaning lady falls in love with an haute couture dress by Christian Dior and decides to gamble everything for the sake of this folly.

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

2022

Dead Man Down poster
6.2

In New York City, a crime lord's right-hand man is seduced by a woman seeking retribution.

Dead Man Down

2013

EO poster
6.5

The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. EO, a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, meets good and bad people on his life’s path, experiences joy and pain, endures the wheel of fortune randomly turn his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected bliss. But not even for a moment does he lose his innocence.

EO

2022

8 Women poster
6.9

Eight women gather to celebrate Christmas in a snowbound cottage, only to find the family patriarch dead with a knife in his back. Trapped in the house, every woman becomes a suspect, each having her own motive and secret.

8 Women

2002

Heart of the Festival poster
6.7

A short film containing some of the highlights of the Cannes Film Festival's storied history.

Heart of the Festival

2002

I ♥ Huckabees poster
6.3

A husband-and-wife team play detective, but not in the traditional sense. Instead, the happy duo helps others solve their existential issues, the kind that keep you up at night, wondering what it all means.

I ♥ Huckabees

2004

Heaven's Gate poster
6.7

Harvard graduate James Averill serves as the sheriff of prosperous Jackson County, Wyoming, standing at the center of a conflict between impoverished immigrants and affluent cattle farmers. Politically connected ranchers enlist mercenary Nathan Champion—who is also vying for the affections of local madam Ella Watson—to combat the immigrant uprising. As tensions escalate, both Averill and Champion start to question their decisions.

Heaven's Gate

1980

La Cérémonie poster
7.3

Sophie, a quiet and shy maid working for an upper-class French family, finds a friend in the energetic and uncompromising postmaster Jeanne, who encourages her to stand up against her bourgeois employers.

La Cérémonie

1995

L'Ampélopède poster
9.0

In a village located in the central French region of Sologne, a young girl notes the negative effects of urbanization on her environment; then she imagines the appearance of the Ampélopède, a strange creature living in the woods.

L'Ampélopède

1974

Elle poster
6.6

When Michèle, the CEO of a gaming software company, is attacked in her home by an unknown assailant, she refuses to let it alter her precisely ordered life. She manages crises involving family, all the while becoming engaged in a game of cat and mouse with her stalker.

Elle

2016

Ma mère poster
4.5

After his father's death, a young man is introduced to a world of hedonism and depravity by his amoral mother.

Ma mère

2004

Louder Than Bombs poster
6.5

Three years after his wife, acclaimed photographer Isabelle Reed, dies in a car crash, Gene keeps everyday life going with his shy teenage son, Conrad. A planned exhibition of Isabelle’s photographs prompts Gene's elder son, Jonah, to return to the house he grew up in — and for the first time in a very long time, the father and the two brothers are living under the same roof.

Louder Than Bombs

2015

The Crime Is Mine poster
6.5

In 1930s Paris, Madeleine, a pretty, young, penniless, and talentless actress, is accused of murdering a famous producer. Helped by her best friend, Pauline, a young, unemployed lawyer, she is acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. A new life of fame and success begins, until the truth comes out.

The Crime Is Mine

2023

Madame Bovary poster
6.2

In 19th-century France, doctor's wife Emma Bovary seeks to escape her dull provincial life through various extramarital affairs and extravagant spending, leading to tragic consequences.

Madame Bovary

1991

The Bronte Sisters poster
5.8

In a small presbytery in Yorkshire, England, living under the watchful eyes of their aunt and father, a strict Anglican pastor, the Bronte sisters write their first works and quickly become literary sensations.

The Bronte Sisters

1979

Histoire vraie poster
10.0

A servant girl, given in marriage when she turns out to be pregnant, can't bring herself to live away from her master.

Histoire vraie

1978

Love After Love poster
5.4

Lola is an independent woman, a professional writer with 2 men on a string. Both men are married with children. When the men, and Lola, face having to make choices, Lola's comfortable life becomes less appealing.

Love After Love

1992

Lumière & Company poster
6.3

40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes.

Lumière & Company

1995

Behind the camera