Marion Cotillard’s casting in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises was made official Tuesday, but the French actress gained fame for three other high-profile roles.
1. La Vie en Rose (2007)
She won a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of singer Edith Piaf. At the time, she told Elle magazine of her sudden success: “I wouldn’t even have imagined being with my French movie in the United States, which is a country of cinema. I’m living a dream I didn’t dare to have.” She later told London’s Telegraph: “The movie and the Oscar changed my life in a very good way. It put me in a different universe. When I was in Los Angeles during the campaign process for the Academy Awards, I kept telling myself that it was not real life, it was something else. I was having an amazing time and really enjoying the fantasy of it all and then I thought I should stop saying it wasn’t real because it WAS real.”
2. Nine (2009)
She landed her first American role opposite
Daniel Day Lewis and
Penelope Cruz in the movie version of the Broadway musical
Nine. “To have the chance to be part of a musical comedy with the likes of all those people was already really exceptional,” she told
France Today at the time. “There was a bond between us all from the beginning. I admire Nicole Kidman and Penelope Cruz enormously; they’re the actresses I spent the most time with on set. The fact that I was able to share all that time with those two made me really happy.”
3. Inception (2010)
She starred opposite
Leonardo DiCaprio in Nolan’s science-fiction adventure. “I had never read a script like it before,” she told London’s
Telegraph when asked why she signed on for the role of a mysterious femme fatale. “It is so emotionally complex I had to read it a second time. But I was touched by the different layers of the story and I wanted to be a part of it.”
