Trivia: One of the most enduring and respected actresses in French cinema, Isabelle Huppert is known for her versatile portrayals of characters ranging from the innocent to the sultry to the comic. Born March 16, 1953, in Paris, Huppert graduated from the Paris Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique and made her first film, Faustine et le Bel Été, when she was 16. Her career accelerated rapidly, and she soon found work with such acclaimed directors as Bertrand Blier, with whom she made Les Valseuses (1974), a film also notable for making a star out of Gérard Depardieu; Otto Preminger, for whom she appeared in Rosebud (1975); and Claude Chabrol, with whom she would make a series of films, starting with 1978's Violette Nozière, for which she won a Best Female Performance award at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival. Also in 1978, she won a British Academy Award for Best Newcomer for her role in La Dentellière (The Lacemaker).Huppert's career in the 1980s commenced fairly inauspiciously, with a part in the legendary flop Heaven's Gate (1981), but it soon picked up with starring roles in Bertrand Tavernier's Coup de Torchon (1981), Jean-Luc Godard's Passion (1982), and Diane Kurys' celebrated Entre Nous (1983). Throughout the 1980s and '90s, Huppert made an impressive number of films in her native country, collaborating with Claude Chabrol on 1988's Une Affaire de Femmes (Story of Women), the widely acclaimed Madame Bovary (1991), and La Cérémonie (1995), for which she won a 1996 Best Actress César. Since the Heaven's Gate fiasco, Huppert's work in American film has been minimal, a worthwhile exception being her role as a nun-turned-nymphomaniac writer of pornographic fiction in Hal Hartley's Amateur (1994). In her native France, Huppert has become something of an institution, continuing to work prolifically on such films as Benoît Jacquot's L'École de la Chair (1998) and serving as the 24th president of the César Awards in March 1999.Despite the fact that American audiences remained sadly unaware of Huppert's success overseas, her performances in Jacquot's False Servant and the historical drama Saint-Cyr (both 2000) found her meeting challenging roles head on to captivating effect. The sometimes disturbing films she appeared in may not have been the easiest for audiences to digest, but they certainly cemented her belief that the art of acting is a means of "living out one's insanity," and no matter what the subject matter or quality of the actual film, Huppert remained a consistently compelling screen presence. Huppert's success in Chabrol's Merci Pour le Chocolat (2000) came as no surprise to many given her successful track record with the enduring director, and the following year she would once again come under the international spotlight for her remarkable performance as a sexually repressed and self-destructive piano teacher in director Michael Haneke's confrontational drama The Piano Teacher (2001). Her fearless powerhouse performance shocked audiences worldwide and earned Huppert a Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was soon counterbalanced by director François Ozon's popular international black comedy 8 Women the following year. A campy, freewheeling musical mystery starring some of the biggest female stars in French cinema, the film came as an unexpected but infectious jolt of originality to audiences whose skin had been worn thin by a recent spat of heavy dramas. Huppert's performance as an opinionated hooker who forms an unexpected bond with her illegitimate daughter in 2002's Ghost River benefited the touching drama well, and the following year, she was back with Haneke for the disturbing The Time of the Wolf. As with many of Haneke's films, The Time of the Wolf sharply divided audiences -- some of whom saw the film as celluloid perfection and others who viewed it as unrelentingly downbeat garbage. In 2003, Huppert would appear under the direction of an American director for the first time since 1994's Amateur with a role in Three Kings director David O. Russell's comedy I Heart Huckabees.

Trivia: The daughter of screen legend Jean-Louis Trintignant, Marie Trintignant made her film debut in mother Nadine's Mon Amour, Mon Amour at the tender age of four, she would essay a series of diverse film and television roles while growing to become a household name in her native France. Though her parents would divorce in 1976, young Trintignant went on to appear in the films of her mother's new beau, Alain Corneau. Her closeness to her father helped in convincing him to appear in director Krzysztof Kieslowski's Red (1994), and the father/daughter team would later appear on-stage together to read the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire. Equally adept at drama and comedy, the husky-voiced actress would distinguish herself with roles in such films as Corneau's Série Noire (1978) and as the troubled titular character in Claude Chabrol's 1992 drama Betty (1992). Trintignant had a son (actor Roman Kolinka) with musician Richard Kolinka and another with actor François Cluzet. Later married to director Samuel Benchetrit, the couple produced two more sons. Unfortunately, tragedy would strike as the result of Trintignant's relationship with Noir Desir frontman Bertrand Cantat in late July of 2003. A call from husband Benchetrit threw Cantat into a jealous rage, during which he struck the actress in the head, sending her into a deep coma. At the time Trintignant had been in Lithuania essaying the title role in mother Nadine's made-for-television feature Colette, and though doctors would subsequently transport the actress to Vilnuis for emergency surgery, the damage had been done, and Trintignant died four days later. She was 41.

Trivia: Was attending drama school when filmmaker and producer Patrice Chéreau spotted her in 1981 and hired her for his stage production of Peer Gynt. Won a Molière Award, the highest theatre award in France, for Best Actress for A Doll's House in 1997. Was a member of the jury of the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. Made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2015.

Trivia: One of the most prolific French actors of the 1980s and '90s, François Cluzet possesses an enviable versatility that makes him equally adept at both high comedy and straight drama. Cluzet, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Dustin Hoffman, began his screen career acting in the films of Diane Kurys. He became established over the years as one of his country's most dependable actors, as likely to play a bumbling petty criminal as a member of the May 1968 generation struggling with bourgeois ennui and moral dilemma.Born in Paris on September 21, 1955, Cluzet was first inspired to become an actor as a child, when his father would take him and his brother on weekly outings to the theatre and music hall. He quit school at the age of 17 to study drama with Jean Périmony. In 1976, he made his theatrical debut and spent the next few years working steadily on the stage. Cluzet began his film career in 1980 with a role in Diane Kurys' Cocktail Molotov, a drama set during the May 1968 protests which cast him as the best friend of one of the film's protagonists. That same year, he had a supporting part in Le Cheval d'Orgueil, the first of many films he would make with Claude Chabrol, and also broke into television. The latter medium would be one that Cluzet would return to constantly even as his film career took flight.1983 proved to be a breakthrough year for the actor, who earned two César nominations, one for his work in L'Été Meurtrier, a drama that cast him as the brother of a man in love with an unstable woman (Isabelle Adjani), and the other for his leading portrayal of a young Parisian reflecting on his Communist/anarchic upbringing in Vive la sociale! That same year, Cluzet again collaborated with Kurys in Coup de Foudre, a WWII marriage drama starring Isabelle Huppert and Miou-Miou as dissatisfied wives.In 1986, Cluzet starred in one of the most celebrated films of his career, 'Round Midnight. Bertrand Tavernier's story of a self-destructive American jazz musician (Dexter Gordon) who is befriended by a young Frenchman (Cluzet), it allowed the actor to carry a film (in tandem with the excellent Gordon) rather than merely support it. Cluzet subsequently stuck with dramas, doing strong work as ineffectual husbands in both Claire Denis's Chocolat and Claude Chabrol's Une Affaire de Femmes (both 1988), the latter of which saw him re-team with Coup de Foudre co-star Huppert. Indeed, during the early 1990s, much of the actor's energies seemed to be directed toward playing troubled husbands, as demonstrated by additional turns in Agneiszka Holland's Olivier, Olivier (1992) and Claude Chabrol's L'Enfer (1994).Cluzet has also been repeatedly cast as struggling authors in a number of films, his slightly tortured intellectual looks lending themselves well to such a profession. He did particularly notable work in this capacity in Les Apprentis (1995), in which he and Guillaume Depardieu co-starred as two losers struggling to pay the rent in Paris; Olivier Assayas' Fin août, début septembre (1998), an ensemble drama in which he played a terminally ill writer; and Dolce Far Niente (2000), which cast him as a young author dallying around the Italian countryside.