Julie Delpy


Julie Delpy is a French-American actress, film director, screenwriter, and singer-songwriter. She studied filmmaking at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and has directed, written, or acted in more than 30 films, including Europa Europa, Voyager, , the Before trilogy, An American Werewolf in Paris, and 2 Days in Paris. She has been nominated for three César Awards, two Online Film Critics Society Awards, and two Academy Awards. After moving to the United States in 1990, she became an American citizen in 2001.

Family

Julie Delpy was born in Paris, the only child of Albert Delpy, a French actor and theater director, and Marie Pillet, a French actress in feature films and the avant-garde theater. Her mother was also known for having signed the 1971 Manifesto of the 343 Bitches, which was signed by women advocating for reproductive rights and admitting to having had an abortion when abortions were illegal in France. In Delpy's 2007 film 2 Days in Paris, her character's mother was played by her real mother and acknowledges signing the manifesto, mirroring her action in real life. Pillet died in 2009.
At an early age, Julie was exposed to the arts by her parents. She later said:

Film career

In 1984, at the age of fourteen, Delpy was discovered by film director Jean-Luc Godard, who cast her in Détective. Two years later, Delpy starred in the title role in Bertrand Tavernier's La Passion Béatrice. For her performance, Delpy was nominated for a César Award for Most Promising Actress. She used the money she earned to pay for her first trip to New York City. Delpy became an international celebrity after starring in the 1990 film Europa Europa directed by Agnieszka Holland. In the film, she plays a young pro-Nazi who falls in love with the hero, Solomon Perel, not knowing that he is Jewish. She did not speak German so she performed her role in English and was later dubbed over.
Following the success of Europa Europa, Delpy appeared in several Hollywood and European films, including Voyager and The Three Musketeers. In 1993, she was cast by director Krzysztof Kieślowski to play the female lead in , the second film of Kieślowski's The Three Colors Trilogy. Delpy also appeared briefly in the other two films in the same role. That same year, she appeared opposite Brendan Fraser in the Percy Adlon feature Younger and Younger starring Donald Sutherland. In 1994, she starred opposite Eric Stoltz in Roger Avary's directorial debut Killing Zoe, a cult heist film capturing the Generation X zeitgeist.
Delpy is best known for her co-starring role with Ethan Hawke in director Richard Linklater's 1995 film Before Sunrise, for which she wrote much of her own dialogue. The film received glowing reviews and was considered one of the most significant films of the 1990s' independent film movement. Its success led to the casting of Delpy in the 1997 American film An American Werewolf in Paris.
In late 2001, she appeared alongside comedian Martin Short in the 30-minute film CinéMagique, a theatre-show attraction presented several times daily at Walt Disney Studios Park in Disneyland Paris. Delpy attended the March 2002 opening of the park and the inauguration of the film-based attraction which sees her star as Marguerite—a female actress with whom Short's character, George, falls in love as he stumbles through countless classic movies. CinéMagique won the 2002 Themed Entertainment Association award for "outstanding" themed attraction. Delpy reprised her Before Sunrise character, Céline, with a brief animated appearance in Waking Life, and again in the sequels Before Sunset and Before Midnight. The initial follow-up movie earned Delpy, who co-wrote the script, her first Academy Award nomination for Writing Adapted Screenplay. In addition, she has been nominated for César Awards three times.

Writing and directing

Delpy has had an interest in a career as a film director since her childhood, and enrolled in a summer directing course at New York University. She wrote and directed the short film Blah Blah Blah in 1995 which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2004 Delpy co-wrote Before Sunset, a sequel to the 1995 movie Before Sunrise, with director Richard Linklater and co-star Ethan Hawke. Describing the experience Delpy said, "I'm not a feminist wearing overalls and hating the male gender. But I'm a definite feminist. I don't want to make Before Sunset into a little male fantasy, ever." She received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for her work. She made her feature length directorial debut in 2002, with a film entitled "Looking for Jimmy" which she also wrote and produced. In 2007, Delpy directed, wrote, edited, and co-produced the original score for 2 Days in Paris co-starring Adam Goldberg. The film also features Delpy's real-life parents, Marie Pillet and Albert Delpy, as her character's parents. In one scene, Pillet's character acknowledges having been one of the "343 bitches"; in real life, Pillet was one of the signers of the Manifesto of the 343 bitches.
In 2009, Delpy starred in The Countess, also her third film as a director in which she played the title role of Elizabeth Báthory. The film also starred Daniel Brühl, and William Hurt. In 2011 Delpy wrote and directed Le Skylab. The film received a theatrical release in France, but failed to find distribution in the U.S. In 2012 she released 2 Days in New York, a sequel to her 2007 film 2 Days in Paris. The film starred Delpy and actor Chris Rock. Delpy stated that she wrote the role specifically for Rock. In 2013, Delpy reunited with Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke to write Before Midnight, the sequel to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. Delpy again starred with Hawke, and the film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. It went on to screen out of competition at the Berlin International Film Festival and was released in May 2013. Delpy was later nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards alongside Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke. Responding to criticism regarding the nudity in the film in an interview with GQ Magazine, Delpy remarked:
Some people were like, 'it's not feminist. You're showing your tits and he's not showing his ass.' isn't it the people who are hiding women behind layers of clothes who are the misogynists? I'm a real person, so it's a statement to say, 'Alright, I'm a forty year-old woman, and this is what you get with no plastic surgery.'

Lolo was Delpy's second French-language feature film. It was also the first film she directed since 2 Days in New York. She was also slated to write and direct the HBO movie Cancer Vixen, starring Cate Blanchett as Marisa Acocella Marchetto, a cartoonist for The New Yorker who is diagnosed with cancer. In early 2014 Delpy announced her next writing-directing project would be called A Dazzling Display of Splendor and focus on a family of vaudeville performers.
Delpy courted controversy in 2016 after the Oscar nominations showed no black honorees on the ballot. "Two years ago, I said something about the Academy being very white male, which is the reality, and I was slashed to pieces by the media... It's funny — women can't talk. I sometimes wish I were African American because people don't bash them afterward."

Music

Delpy is also a musical artist. She released a self-titled album Julie Delpy in 2003. Three tracks from the album–"A Waltz For A Night," "An Ocean Apart," and "Je t'aime tant"–were featured in Before Sunset. She composed the original score for "2 Days in Paris," in which she famously performed Marc Collin's "Lalala" over the closing credits. She also wrote the music for her 2009 movie The Countess.

Personal life

Delpy moved to New York in 1990 and moved to Los Angeles a few years after that. She has been a naturalized citizen of the United States since 2001, although she also retains her French citizenship. She now divides her time between Paris and Los Angeles. From 2007 to 2012, she was in a relationship with German film score composer Marc Streitenfeld. The couple's son, Leo Streitenfeld, was born in January 2009. In a BBC Radio 4 interview broadcast on 29 March 2018, Delpy referred to her husband, though she did not name him.
Delpy has expressed her commitment to correcting inaccurate assumptions regarding feminism, telling IndieWire "I'm very dedicated to feminism even if I'm a feminist, I don't think all women are perfect. If we're equal to men, we are also imperfect like men... try to say think that women are better than men, and I want to tell them, 'no'." In a 2007 interview with Jan Lisa Huttner, Delpy said, "I was raised by a feminist, so I’m not a feminist. I don’t need to be. I’m equal to men. I have no issues with the idea that I’m the same as a man. I have my differences; I have breasts, and different plumbing, different stuff down there. But outside of this, my consciousness, my capacity at creating, my capacity at doing things is the same as a man."
Delpy has said she has been plagued by health problems since childhood and had to wear callipers at age eight. She also occasionally experiences migraines and panic attacks.

Filmography

As actress

YearTitleRoleNotes
1978Guerres civiles en FranceCredited as Julie Pillet
Segment La semaine sanglante
1982Niveau moins troisShort film
1985ClassiqueShort film
1985DétectiveWise young girl
1985L'Amour ou presqueMelie
1986Mauvais SangLiseEnglish: Bad Blood
Nominated—César Award for Most Promising Actress
1987BeatriceBeatrice de CortemartFrench: La Passion Béatrice
Nominated—César Award for Most Promising Actress
1987King LearVirginia
1988L'autre nuitMarie
1989La noche oscuraVirgin MaryEnglish: The Dark Night
1989TroubleShort film
1990Europa EuropaLeni
1991Les dents de ma mèreJulieShort film
1991VoyagerSabethNominated—European Film Award for Best Actress
1992Warsaw - Year 5703Fryda
1993The Three MusketeersConstance
1993Younger and YoungerMelodie
1993Killing ZoeZoe
1993'Dominique
1994'Dominique
1994'Dominique
1995Blah Blah BlahShort filmAlso as writer, director, and producer
1995Before SunriseCélineNominated—MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss
1996Tykho MoonLena
1997Les mille merveilles de l'universEva PurpurEnglish: The Thousand Wonders of the Universe
1997An American Werewolf in ParisSerafine Pigot
1997Alleys and MotorwaysVideo
1998The TreatFrancesca
1998L.A. Without a MapJulie
1998Crime and PunishmentSoniaTelevision film
1999True LoveTelevision film
1999The Passion of Ayn RandBarbara BrandenTelevision film
1999But I'm a CheerleaderLipstick Lesbian
2000SandLill
2001Investigating SexChloeAlso known as Intimate Affairs
2001MacArthur ParkWendy
2001Waking LifeCéline
2001Beginner's LuckAnya
2001ERNicoleTelevision program, 7 episodes
2002Villa des rosesLouise Creteur
2002Looking for JimmyAlAlso as writer, director, and producer
2002CinéMagiqueMargueriteDisney Theme Park Attraction
2003Notting Hill Anxiety FestivalCharlotte
2004Before SunsetCélineAlso as writer and composer
Empire Award for Best Actress
San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress
Nominated—National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress
Nominated—Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress
Nominated—Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress
2004FrankensteinCaroline FrankensteinMiniseries
2005Broken FlowersSherry
2006The Legend of Lucy KeyesJeanne Cooley
2006The HoaxNina van Pallandt
2006Guilty HeartsCharlotte
2007The Air I BreatheGina
20072 Days in ParisMarionAlso as writer, director, and producer
2009The CountessErzsébet BáthoryAlso as writer, director, and producer
2011SkylabAnnaAlso as writer and director
20122 Days in New YorkMarionAlso as writer and director
2013Before MidnightCélineNominated—Detroit Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress
Nominated—Dublin Film Critics' Circle Award for Best Actress
Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical
Nominated—Guardian Film Award for Best Actor
Nominated—Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead
Nominated—National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress
Nominated—Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress
Nominated—Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress
2015'Madame B.
2015LoloVioletteAlso as writer and director
2016Wiener-DogDina
2017The BachelorsCarine
2019My ZoeIsabelleAlso director and writer

As filmmaker

Awards and nominations