Marion Cotillard

About Marion Cotillard

Marion Cotillard (French: [maʁjɔ̃ kɔtijaʁ]; born 30 September 1975) is a French actress. She grew up in Alfortville, in the southern suburbs of Paris, where she lived with her family in a flat on the 18th floor of a tower block until she was 11 years old, when her family moved to the small commune of Aulnay-la-Rivière in the Loiret department in north-central France. She grew up in an artistically inclined household. Her mother, Niseema Theillaud [fr], is an actress and drama teacher. Her father, Jean-Claude Cotillard [fr], is an actor, teacher, former mime (appearing in French in Action), and theatre director, of Breton descent. She has two younger twin brothers, Quentin and Guillaume, a writer and a sculptor. The family later moved to La Beauce, a town near Orléans, where her father set up his own theatre company.

She is known for her roles in independent films and blockbusters in both European and Hollywood productions, and she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, a European Film Award, a Lumières Award and two César Awards. She became a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in France in 2010, and was promoted to Officer in 2016, the same year she was named a Knight of the Legion of Honour. She has served as a spokeswoman for Greenpeace since 2001. She was the face of the Lady Dior handbag for nine years, and since 2020 she is the face of the fragrance Chanel No. 5.

Cotillard started acting as a child in theatre and in TV films. She had her first English-language role in the TV series Highlander (1993), and made her feature film debut in The Story of a Boy Who Wanted to Be Kissed (1994). Her breakthrough came in the successful French film Taxi (1998), which earned her a César Award nomination for Most Promising Actress. She made her Hollywood debut in Big Fish (2003), and won her first César Award for Best Supporting Actress for A Very Long Engagement (2004). She had her major English-language role up to that point in A Good Year (2006).

For her portrayal of French singer Édith Piaf in La Vie en Rose (2007), Cotillard won her second César Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Lumières Award and the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first and (as of 2023) only actor to win an Academy Award for a French-language performance, and also the second actress to have won this award for a non-English language performance. She earned several critics' awards for The Immigrant (2013) and Two Days, One Night (2014), three more Golden Globe nominations for Nine (2009), Rust and Bone (2012), and Annette (2021), and received a second Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for Two Days, One Night in 2015, her second nomination for a French-language film, becoming one of only seven actors to receive multiple Academy Award nominations for non-English language performances. She has continued to star in major English-language films such as Public Enemies (2009), Inception (2010), Contagion (2011), Midnight in Paris (2011), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Macbeth (2015), Allied (2016), Annette (2021), and Lee (2023).

Cotillard has played Joan of Arc on stage in several countries between 2005 and 2022 in the oratorio Joan of Arc at the Stake. She has narrated several documentaries and provided voice acting for the animated films The Little Prince (2015), April and the Extraordinary World (2015), the French version of Minions (2015), Charlotte (2021), and The Inventor (2023). Her other notable French, Belgian and Canadian films include La Belle Verte (1996), Pretty Things (2001), Love Me If You Dare (2003), Dikkenek (2006), Little White Lies (2010), and It's Only the End of the World (2016).

From October 2007 to 2025, Cotillard was in a relationship with French actor and director Guillaume Canet.[264][265] They had been friends since 1997,[266] and co-starred together for the first time years later in the 2003 film Love Me If You Dare. They never got married. Though since 2010 Cotillard had been spotted wearing a diamond solitaire on her left hand — a present from Canet — they were not engaged either.[267] In 2014, Cotillard denied being married to Canet,[268] referring to him as "my boyfriend" in interviews.[269][270][271][272] In 2011, they had their first child, a son, Marcel,[273] and in 2017, their second child, a daughter, Louise was born.[274][275] On 27 June 2025, Cotillard and Canet announced their separation in a joint statement to French news agency Agence France-Presse, saying that they made the separation public "to avoid all speculation, rumors and risky interpretations," and that they decided to separate after 18 years together by "mutual agreement" and with "mutual goodwill."[276]