Cannes Flashback: ‘Rust and Bone’ Was Marion Cotillard’s First Competition Film

A homegrown French talent, Paris-born Marion Cotillard will kick off the 2021 Cannes Film Festival when her new film Annette, a musical directed by Leos Carax and co-starring Adam Driver, screens in competition on July 6.

Cotillard has appeared in 12 films at Cannes. None, amazingly, are La Vie En Rose, the 2007 Édith Piaf biopic that won her an Oscar and made her a global superstar. It would, in fact, take another four years for her to actually appear in a film screened at Cannes — and that would be in a small role as an artist’s muse in Woody Allen’s 2011 film Midnight in Paris.

It wasn’t until the following year that Cotillard finally starred in a competition film — Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone, in which she plays an orca trainer who loses her legs in a freak accident (but wins Matthias Schoenaerts as a love interest). The film went on to earn two Golden Globe nominations (for best foreign-language film and best actress) and win four César Awards (including for most promising actor for Schoenaerts).

Despite the triumphs, working with the captive sea creatures was a trying affair for Cotillard, who told THR that after watching her first orca show, “I tried to hold myself from throwing up and crying.” When a park attendant asked her what she thought, she replied: “I hated it. I hate animals in captivity.”