Marion Cotillard Trivia: 75 interesting facts about the french actress!

Marion Cotillard is a French actress, singer-songwritter, environmentalist and spokesperson for Greenpeace. Let’s see some interesting facts and trivia about her!

1.She was born on September 30, 1975.

2. Marion Cotillard was born in Paris, and grew up around Orléans, in an artistically inclined, “bustling, creative household”.

3. Her father, Jean-Claude Cotillard, is an actor, teacher, former mime, and 2006 Molière Award-winning director.

4. He is of Breton descent.

5. Marion Cotillard’s mother, Niseema Theillaud, who has Kabyle ancestry, is also an actress and drama teacher.

6. Her two younger brothers are twins: Quentin and Guillaume. Guillaume is a screenwriter and director.

7. Marion Cotillard began acting during her childhood, appearing on stage in one of her father’s plays

8. After small appearances and performances in theater, Cotillard had occasional, minor roles in television series such as Highlander – where she had her first English-speaking role at age 17, appearing as Lori Bellian in the episode “Nowhere to Run”, she also had an uncredited role in the episode “Saving Grace”, in which she appeared giving birth in one scene.

9. But her career as a film actress began in the mid-1990s, with small but noticeable roles in films like L’ Histoire du garçon qui voulait qu’on l’embrasse, Arnaud Desplechin’s My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument and the comedy La Belle Verte directed by Coline Serreau.

10. In 1996, Cotillard had her first leading role in the TV film Chloé, playing the title role, a teenage runaway who is forced into prostitution, co-starring Anna Karina.

11. In 1998, she appeared in Gérard Pirès’ action comedy Taxi, playing Lili Bertineau, girlfriend of delivery boy Daniel.

12. The film was a hit in France and she was nominated for a César Award for Most Promising Actress.

13. Marion Cotillard reprised the role in two sequels: Taxi 2 and Taxi 3.

14. She then ventured into science fiction with Alexandre Aja’s post-apocalyptic romantic drama, Furia in 1999.

15. That same year, Cotillard starred in the Swiss war drama film War in the Highlands (La Guerre dans le Haut Pays), for which she won the Best Actress Award at the Autrans Film Festival in 1999.

16. In 2001, she appeared in Pierre Grimblat’s film Lisa, playing the title role and younger version of Jeanne Moreau’s character, co-starring with Benoît Magimel and Sagamore Stévenin.

17. In the same year, she starred in Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s film Pretty Things (Les Jolies Choses), adapted from the work of feminist writer Virginie Despentes.

18. In the drama, Cotillard portrayed twins of completely opposite characters, Lucie and Marie, and she was nominated for a César Award for Most Promising Actress for her performance.

19. In 2002, she appeared in Guillaume Nicloux’s thriller A Private Affair (Une Affaire Privée), where she portrayed the mysterious Clarisse

20. In 2003, Cotillard had a notable supporting role in Tim Burton’s film Big Fish, it was her first American film and she appeared alongside Helena Bonham Carter, Albert Finney, Ewan McGregor, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange and Allison Lohman.

21. In the film she plays Joséphine, the French wife of William Bloom (Crudup).

22. In the same year, she starred in the French romantic comedy film Love Me If You Dare (Jeux d’enfants), as Sophie Kowalsky, the daughter of Polish immigrants. The film was directed by Yann Samuel and was a box office hit in France.

23. In 2004, she won the Chopard Trophy of Female Revelation at the Cannes Film Festival.

24. In 2005, Cotillard starred in six films: Steve Suissa’s romantic drama Cavalcade as Alizée; in Abel Ferrara’s religious drama Mary, alongside Forest Whitaker and Juliette Binoche; portrayed Isabelle Kruger and Alice in the thriller film The Black Box (La Boîte Noire), directed by Richard Berry; starred in the romantic comedy Love Is in the Air (Ma vie en l’air); in the drama Burnt Out (Sauf le respect que je vous dois) and Edy, directed by Stéphan Guérin-Tillié.

25. In 2006, the actress starred in four films, including Ridley Scott’s romantic comedy A Good Year, in which she portrayed Fanny Chenal, a French café owner in a small Provençal town, opposite Russell Crowe as a Londoner who inherits a local property; the Belgian comedy Dikkenek alongside Mélanie Laurent, appeared in Fair Play as Nicole and in the satirical coming-of-age film Toi et moi, for which she learned to play the cello for her rol

26. Marion Cotillard was chosen by director Olivier Dahan to portray the French singer Édith Piaf in the biopic La Vie en Rose before he had even met her, saying that he noticed a similarity between Piaf’s and Cotillard’s eyes.

27. She is the first actress to win a Golden Globe for a foreign language performance since 1972, when Liv Ullmann won for The Emigrants.

28. She is also the first person to win a (Comedy or Musical) Golden Globe for a foreign language performance.

29. On 10 February 2008, Cotillard became the first French actress to be awarded the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role since Stéphane Audran in 1973.

30. On 22 February 2008, she was awarded the César Award for Best Actress for her performance in La Vie en Rose.

31. Alain Delon presented the award and announced the winner as “La Môme Marion” (The Kid Marion), also praising her on stage saying: “Marion, I give you this César. I think this César is for a great great actress, and I know what I’m talking about”.

32. Two days later, on 24 February 2008 at the Academy Awards, she won Best Actress, becoming the first woman and second person (after Adrien Brody, The Pianist) to win both a César and an Oscar for the same performance.

33. Marion Cotillard is the second French cinema actress to win this award and the third overall to receive an Academy Award after Simone Signoret in 1960 and Juliette Binoche in 1997.

34. She is the first Best Actress winner in a non-English language performance since Sophia Loren’s win in 1961.

35. She is also the first and (as of 2016) only winner of an Academy Award for a performance in the French language.

36. In her Oscar acceptance speech,  Marion Cotillard proclaimed “thank you life, thank you love” and, speaking of Los Angeles, said “it is true, there is some angels (sic) in this city!”

37. The day following the ceremony, Cotillard was congratulated and praised by the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy,

38. La Vie En Rose was partly a Czech production, as Cotillard mentioned in her César acceptance speech.

39. On 1 March 2008, Cotillard won a Czech Lion Award for Best Actress.

40. She could not attend the ceremony in Prague due to the filming of Public Enemies. Her friend Pavlína Němcová – who played the journalist in La vie en Rose – was there to accept the award on her behalf.

41. Marion Cotillard won a total of 27 awards for her performance in La Vie en Rose.

42. Marion Cotillard starred alongside Johnny Depp and Christian Bale in Public Enemies, which was released in the United States on 1 July 2009. Later that year, Cotillard appeared in the film adaptation of the musical Nine, directed by Rob Marshall, playing Luisa Contini, the wife of Guido, played by Daniel Day-Lewis.

43. On 15 December 2009, Cotillard was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for her performance in the film.

44. Marion Cotillard appeared on the cover of the November 2009 issue of Vogue with her Nine co-stars, and on the July 2010 cover by herself.

45. On February 27, 2010, she was the Honorary President of the 35th César Awards Ceremony.[43]

46. She appeared as “Mal Cobb” in Christopher Nolan’s film Inception, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, which released on 16 July 2010. Cotillard and Leonardo DiCaprio ranked #8 on the list “Hollywood’s Top Earning On-Screen Couples” by Forbes for Inception, which made $825 million at the worldwide box-office. They are the only couple from a non-franchise film.

47. In the same year, she also starred in Guillaume Canet’s drama Little White Lies (Les petits mouchoirs), playing the environmentalist Marie, alongside Jean Dujardin and François Cluzet.

48. In 2011, she starred in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris alongside Rachel McAdams, Owen Wilson and Kathy Bates.

49. Also that year, Cotillard appeared on the top of Le Figaro’s list of the highest paid actors in France in 2010, the first time in nine years that a female has topped the list, and she was also tied with Kate Winslet as the highest paid foreign actress in Hollywood.

50. In 2012, she was ranked #9 on the list of the highest paid actresses in France.

51. In 2012, Cotillard appeared in Christopher Nolan’s film The Dark Knight Rises, playing Miranda Tate, a board member at Wayne Enterprises. The film reunited her with her Inception co-stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy. It also reunited her with Public Enemies co-star Christian Bale.

52. Cate Blanchett wrote an op-ed for Variety praising Cotillard’s performance in Rust and Bone, describing it as “simply astonishing” and said that “Marion has created a character of nobility and candour, seamlessly melding herself into a world we could not have known without her.

53. In 2013, Cotillard was named Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ Woman of the Year by Harvard students.

54. She was also ranked the 2nd highest paid actress in France in 2012.

55. On May 2013, She appeared in the controversial music video “The Next Day” by David Bowie, alongside Gary Oldman, her co-star in The Dark Knight Rises.

56. Marion Cotillard was named “The Most Beautiful Face of 2013” by The Independent Critics List, and was ranked #13 on Empire Online’s list of the “100 Sexiest Movie Stars” in 2013.

57. In August 2014, Cotillard was named “the great silent film actress of our time” by The Daily Telegraph’s Robbie Collin, for her ability to show emotions only with her eyes and facial expressions, although she never appeared in a silent film

58. As of 2016, Cotillard’s films have grossed more than 3 billion dollars at the worldwide box-office

59. Marion Cotillard sings, plays guitar, bass guitar, keyboard and tambourine.

60. She co-wrote and performed the song “La Fille De Joie” for her film Pretty Things (Les Jolies Choses), in which she played a singer and also performed the song “La Conne” for this film.

61. In 2010, she recorded a song called “Happy Crowd” with the French band Yodelice and sang few songs on their album “Cardioid”. She also went on tour with the band in different cities in France and Belgium under the pseudonym “Simone”, which is her grandmother’s name. Cotillard appears in the video “More Than Meets the Eyes” from Yodelice (2010)[94]

62. She also recorded the song “The Eyes of Mars” alongside Franz Ferdinand especially for Dior.

63. In 2012, she wrote and performed the song “Lily’s Body” for the fourth episode of the Lady Dior Web Documentary with the same title.

64. In 2008, Cotillard was chosen as the face of Dior’s “Lady Dior” advertising campaign and was featured in an online mini-movie directed by John Cameron Mitchell about the fictional character created by John Galliano.

65. She also starred in a series of short films that were situated in different cities to promote the “Lady Dior” handbags: Lady Noire Affair (in Paris) directed by Olivier Dahan, Lady Blue Shanghai directed by David Lynch, Lady Rouge (in New York) directed by Jonas Akerlund and Lady Grey London directed by John Cameron Mitchell and starring Ian McKellen and Russell Tovey.

66. In 2012, she starred in the web-series Lady Dior Web Documentary and wrote and performed the song “Lily’s body” for one episode, she also designed her own handbag for Dior, the “360° bag”.

67. Marion Cotillard also appeared on the cover of the first issue of Dior Magazine in September 2012.

68. In addition to her film work, Cotillard is interested in environmental activism, and has participated in campaigns for environmental protection, in particular Greenpeace, for whom she has acted as a spokesperson since 2002.

69. In 2013, she caged herself near Paris’s Louvre museum to demand the freeing of 30 Greenpeace activists jailed in Russia over an Arctic protest. She entered the cage and held a banner proclaiming “I am a climate defender”.

70. On 21 May 2014, Greenpeace released the animated video “The Amazon’s Silent Crisis”, narrated by Cotillard. The video highlights the troubling illegal logging that threatens the Brazilian Amazon

71. Cotillard is the patron of Maud Fontenoy Foundation, a non-governmental organization which is dedicated to teaching children about preserving the oceans.

72. She is also the ambassador of Association Wayanga, a French association that supports indigenous peoples for their rights and the preservation of their cultures and the Amazon Forest they inhabit.

73. In the late 90s, Cotillard was in a relationship with French actor Julien Rassam.

74. From 2000 to 2005, she was in a relationship with French actor Stéphan Guérin-Tillié. She dated French singer Sinclair from 2005 to 2007.

76. Since October 2007, Cotillard has been in a relationship with French actor and director Guillaume Canet. The couple’s son, Marcel, was born on 19 May 2011. Despite popular belief, the couple are not married. In 2014, Cotillard denied being married to Canet, and she often refers to him as “my boyfriend”