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.

Trivia: At once earthy and modern, yet effortlessly capable of projecting the aura of a glamorous, silent-era film starlet, French actress Marion Cotillard has achieved fame in her home country with substantial roles in such high-profile blockbusters as the Taxi series, and such critically acclaimed arthouse hits as Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement and Olivier Dahan's La Vie en Rose. The Paris native got in tune with her desire to become a performer early in life, and soon began honing her talents as both an actress and a singer. As fate would have it, Cotillard's parents were both active members of the Paris theater community who lovingly nurtured their daughter's creative talents and encouraged her to pursue a career on the stage and screen. Cotillard debuted onscreen at just 16 years old, in the 1994 Philippe Harel romance The Story of a Boy Who Wanted to Be Kissed. While Cotillard's sensitive performance in the film indeed marked the arrival of a skilled young actress, it wasn't until the release of Taxi in 1998 that audiences truly perked up to the promise of this emerging talent. Cotillard was nominated for a Most Promising Actress award at the 1999 César ceremonies thanks to her performance in that movie. She went on to appear in the second and third installments of the series while simultaneously drawing notice for performances in Haute Tension director Alexandre Aja's 1999 debut, Furia, and Gilles Paquet-Brenner's dark family drama Pretty Things -- which earned Cotillard her second César nomination. While the elusive César award had been well within her grasp twice before, Cotillard finally won the coveted trophy as the result of her role in Amélie director Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement. Cast as a vengeful prostitute who sets out to punish the person responsible for the death of her love, Cotillard was awarded the Best Supporting Actress César in 2005, cementing her arrival as a formidable onscreen talent.At this point in her career, Cotillard was an increasingly familiar face to stateside film fans thanks to supporting roles in such films as Tim Burton's Big Fish and Jeunet's international arthouse hit, yet as with any great actress, she was still willing to take the kind of risks needed to take her career to the next level. Subsequent roles in Guillaume Nicloux's A Private Affair and Abel Ferrara's Mary proved that she was most certainly up to the task, serving nicely to offset the mainstream sweetness of efforts like the airy 2003 romance Love Me If You Dare. In 2006, Cotillard was back on stateside screens, this time opposite international superstar Russell Crowe in director Ridley Scott's A Good Year. If anyone at this point had doubted Cotillard's abilities as an actress, those reservations would be put to the ultimate test when she assumed the role of a lifetime in the 2007 Edith Piaf biopic La Vie en Rose. Cast as the enigmatic French songstress who went from being a common street busker to a national icon, Cotillard found the perfect cinematic vehicle to combine her duel interests in acting and music (though audio recordings of Piaf were used in the film), and drew near unanimous praise from critics both foreign and domestic. In addition to netting another César, she captured a host of year-end accolades in the States including Best Actress awards from the Golden Globes and the L.A. Film Critics, as well as a nomination from the Screen Actors Guild. Most impressive of all, Cotillard won the much-coveted Best Actress Oscar, launching her into another level of international success and marketability. Her next roles were of the prestigious Hollywood variety, in the Michael Mann period crime drama Public Enemies, opposite Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, and the Rob Marshall musical drama Nine, alongside Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz.In 2010 she showed up as the woman of Leonardo DiCaprio's nightmares in Inception for director Christopher Nolan - and earned a spot in 2012's The Dark Knight Rises in the process. 2011 saw the Oscar winner tackling both Steven Soderbergh's killer virus thriller Contagion as well as Woody Allen's Oscar winning comedy Midnight in Paris. In 2014 she scored strong reviews in a pair of dramas that included The Immigrant and Two Days, One Night. Her work in the latter film garnered a number of year-end accolades including an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

Trivia: The impossibly slick and suave, fair-haired Gallic actor Benoît Magimel grew up as the son of a Parisian banker and entered the ranks of show business at age 12, when he responded to a casting call for director Étienne Chatiliez's offbeat comedy La Vie est Une Longue Fleuve Tranquille (1988). He promptly landed the lead in that smash, and his performance as one of two little boys switched at birth put him on the international map; in subsequent years, he grew into one of the most prolific French performers of his generation, enjoying collaborations with top-tiered directors including André Téchiné (Les Voleurs, 1996), Mathieu Kassovitz (La haine, 1995), and Michael Haneke (La Pianiste, 2001). The said Téchiné role, in particular, further ensured his stardom, placing him alongside heavyweights Daniel Auteuil and Catherine Deneuve and proving that he could more than hold his own (in fact, he netted a César Award for it -- the French Oscar -- as the most promising actor). Magimel's many additional projects included the lead in the racially themed drama Lisa (2001) opposite Jeanne Moreau, another lead in director Olivier Dahan's supernaturally charged detective drama The Crimson Rivers II (2006) opposite Jean Reno, and a four-barreled portrayal of an unstable pharmaceutical heir in director Claude Chabrol's acerbic black comedy thriller La Fille Coupée en Deux (2007).

Trivia: French actor and comedian Jean Dujardin has brought such undeniable leading-man charm to his career on-screen that it may come as a surprise that he didn't decide to become an actor early on. Raised in a commune outside of Paris, Dujardin worked for his family's construction company after high school. He became interested in show business later, while he was serving his mandatory military service. Dujardin eventually developed a one-man show, which he performed in pubs and cabarets, before transitioning to the screen in 1999 when he began appearing on the French TV series Un gars, une fille. Dujardin was a hit with audiences, and prominent movie roles soon followed, notably with 2005's Brice de Nice and 2006's OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies. He remained one of the most famous actors of the French screen in the years that followed, but American audiences eventually came to know the performer as well when he starred in 2011's critical smash The Artist. A throwback to the early days of film, the movie transcended the language barrier quite easily, as it was silent. The film racked up numerous awards, as did Dujardin for his performance -- including an Academy Award for Best Actor. He next co-directed, co-produced, co-wrote and starred in 2012's Les Infidèles (The Players), and took on a supporting role in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).