1. Isabelle Yasmine Adjani was born on 27 June 1955 and is a French actress and singer of Algerian and German descent.
42 Facts About Isabelle Adjani
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Isabelle Adjani has received various accolades, including five Cesar Awards and a Lumiere Award, along with nominations for two Academy Awards.
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Isabelle Adjani has won a record five Cesars for Best Actress for Possession, One Deadly Summer, Camille Claudel, La Reine Margot, and La Journee de la jupe.
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Isabelle Adjani's other Cesar-nominated roles were in The Story of Adele H, Barocco, Subway, and The World Is Yours.
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Isabelle Adjani later collected a second Best Actress nomination for portraying Camille Claudel in Camille Claudel, thus becoming the first French actress to receive two Academy Award nominations for foreign-language films.
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Isabelle Adjani won the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actress Award for her performances in Possession and Quartet, which makes her the only actress to win a joint award for two films in the same competition slate, and the Berlinale's Silver Bear for Best Actress for Camille Claudel.
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Isabelle Yasmine Adjani was born on 27 June 1955 in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, to Mohammed Cherif Adjani, an Algerian Muslim from Constantine, and Emma Augusta "Gusti" Schweinberger, a German Catholic from Bavaria.
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Isabelle Adjani's parents met near the end of World War II, when her father was in the French Army and stationed in Germany.
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Isabelle Adjani asked him to take Cherif as his first name as she thought it sounded more "American".
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Isabelle Adjani grew up bilingual, speaking French and German fluently, in Gennevilliers, a northwestern suburb of Paris, where her father worked in a garage.
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Isabelle Adjani successfully passed her baccalaureat and was auditing classes at the University of Vincennes in 1976.
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Isabelle Adjani had a younger brother, Eric, who was a photographer.
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At the age of 14, Isabelle Adjani starred in her first motion picture, Le Petit Bougnat.
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Isabelle Adjani first gained fame as a classical actress at the Comedie-Francaise, which she joined in 1972.
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Isabelle Adjani was praised for her interpretation of Agnes, the main female role in Moliere's L'Ecole des femmes.
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Isabelle Adjani soon left the theatre to pursue a film career.
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Isabelle Adjani immediately cast her in her first major role in The Story of Adele H, a project that he had finished writing five years prior but had waited to cast the right actress for the part.
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Only 19 when she made the film, Isabelle Adjani was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, becoming the youngest Best Actress nominee at the time.
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Isabelle Adjani quickly received offers for roles in Hollywood films, such as Walter Hill's 1978 crime thriller The Driver.
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Isabelle Adjani had previously turned down the chance to star in films like The Other Side of Midnight.
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Isabelle Adjani played Lucy in the German director Werner Herzog's 1979 remake of Nosferatu which was well-received critically and performed well at box offices in Europe.
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That same year, Isabelle Adjani released the French pop album Pull marine, written and produced by Serge Gainsbourg.
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Isabelle Adjani then starred in a music video for the hit title song, Pull Marine, which was directed by Luc Besson.
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Isabelle Adjani drew controversy at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival when she refused to attend a traditional photocall after the press conference for One Deadly Summer.
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Isabelle Adjani was annoyed at the time by the intrusion of photographers into her private life.
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Isabelle Adjani received her third Cesar and second Oscar nomination for her role in the film, becoming the first French actress to receive two Oscar nominations.
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Isabelle Adjani received her fourth Cesar for the 1994 film Queen Margot, an ensemble epic directed by Patrice Chereau.
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Isabelle Adjani received her fifth Cesar for Skirt Day, the most that any actress has received.
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Isabelle Adjani embodied the commander Clara Damico, head of the brigade for the repression of banditry.
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Isabelle Adjani became the first French actress to star in a Bollywood film, playing the mother of Preity Zinta in the 2013 romantic comedy Ishkq in Paris, directed by Prem Soni and alongside Shekhar Kapur.
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Isabelle Adjani joined the comedy The World Is Yours, playing the eccentric Dany, directed by Romain Gavras alongside Vincent Cassel, which entered into the Directors' Fortnight during the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
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In 2023, Isabelle Adjani released her second French pop album Bande originale, written and produced by Pascal Obispo, and arranged by Cecile DeLaurentis.
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Isabelle Adjani joined the Netflix action film Wingwomen, directed by Melanie Laurent, and then, the Netflix miniseries The Perfect Couple directed by Susanne Bier, alongside Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber.
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In 1979, Isabelle Adjani had a son, Barnabe Said-Nuytten, with the cinematographer Bruno Nuytten.
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Isabelle Adjani later hired Nuytten to direct her project Camille Claudel, a biopic of the sculptor who was the lover of Rodin.
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Isabelle Adjani was later engaged to the composer Jean-Michel Jarre; they broke up in 2004.
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On 14 December 2023, Isabelle Adjani was handed a two-year suspended sentence for tax fraud.
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Isabelle Adjani has been vocal against anti-immigrant and anti-Algerian sentiments in France.
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In 2017, Isabelle Adjani was interviewed by Vincent Josse on the French public radio station France Inter.
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In 2018 Isabelle Adjani signed a letter calling to act "firmly and immediately" for stopping climate change and biodiversity loss.
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Isabelle Adjani was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour on 14 July 2010 for her contributions to the arts.
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Isabelle Adjani was appointed Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2014.