Fanny Ardant

Biography: life and films

Fanny Ardant was born on 22nd March 1949 in Saumur, in the Pays de la Loire region of France. Her father was a cavalry officer, related to great military theorist Charles Ardant du Picq. As a child, Fanny grew up in Monaco, where her father was an adviser to the royal family. She subsequently spent much of her childhood moving around Europe. She studied political science at the university of Aix-en-Provence, but her passion for theatre (in particular the plays of Racine, Montherlant and Claudel) led her to become an actress. She made her first film appearance in Joël Séria's Marie-poupée (1976).

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Fanny Ardant was frequently seen on French television in a wide variety of made-for-TV movies and series. These included the prestigious mini-series Les Dames de la côte (1979), which drew the attention of director François Truffaut. As soon as he saw her, Truffaut was captivated by Ardant's unconventional beauty - her dark eyes, her wide mouth, her triangular face and her deep voice. He immediately got in touch with her and offered her a role in his next film, La Femme d'à côté (1981). Ardant reciprocated Truffaut's feelings for her and the two lived the perfect romance, right up until the director's premature death in 1984. Ardant was the star of Truffaut's last film, Vivement dimanche! (1983), a billet-doux dressed up as a film noir thriller parody.

Once she had established herself as a film actress in the early 1980s, Fanny Ardant became much sought-after and was soon receiving offers of work from some very distinguished filmmakers. André Delvaux cast her opposite Vittorio Gassman in Benvenuta (1983), Volker Schlöndorff gave her an important role in his Proust adaptation, Un amour de Swann (1984), and Alain Resnais used her in three of his films: La Vie est un roman (1983), L'Amour à mort (1984) and Mélo (1986). She played opposite Johnny Hallyday in Costa-Gavras's Conseil de famille (1986) and Jeremy Irons in Jean-Jacques Andrien's Australia (1989).

Ardant's obvious sex appeal was exploited thoroughly in the 1990s notably by Patrice Leconte in Ridicule (1996) and Gabriel Aghion in Le Libertin (2000). One of her most popular roles was that of the owner of the gay nightclub in Aghion's hit comedy Pédale douce (1996), for which she won the Best Actress César in 1997. In 2002, she got to wrestle Catherine Deneuve in François Ozon's popular musical whodunit 8 femmes and she played the legendary opera singer Maria Callas in Franco Zeffirelli's Callas Forever.

Since the mid-1970s, Fanny Ardant has also pursued a very busy stage career and presently devotes more of her time to the theatre, although she still enjoys a high profile presence in cinema, recently starring in Claude Lelouch's Roman de gare (2007). In 2009, she made her directing debut with Cendres et sang (2009), an ambitious period melodrama. She is unmarried and has three daughters, including one by François Truffaut. In 2002, the popular singer Vincent Delerm dedicated a song to the actress, entitled: Fanny Ardant et moi. Although she recently provoked anger in Italy when, in an interview, she described Renato Curcio (founder of the Red Brigades) as a hero (a remark she later retracted), she remains one of France's most popular and well-regarded actresses.

Filmography

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