Facts
A model at the age of two, Virginie Ledoyen
began acting in commercials soon after
and landed her first movie bit at age nine in
Les Exploits d'un jeune Don Juan/The Exploits of a Young Don
Juan (1987). She later starred as Mima, the sweet child who sees the men who take her grandfather away to kill him in Philomene Esposito's
attractive first feature, and played a teenager adopted
by a bizarre Argentine expatriate (Marcello Mastroianni)
in Le Voleur d'enfants/The Children Thief (both 1991).
No less a personage than the esteemed director
Marcel Carne recognized her talent early,
casting her in the title role of his comeback
feature Mouche. Ledoyen appeared on
his arm at Cannes in 1992 as the octogenarian
raised money for the project, put on hold after a few days
of fall shooting due to bad weather and
insurance problems surrounding Carne's age and failing health.
Her first real notice came as a rebellious teen
committed to an institute after a shoplifting
spree in Olivier Assayas' L'Eau froide/Cold Water
(1993), and she has credited Assayas as an inspiration,
but it would remain for director Benoit Jacquot
to make her star. They first teamed for
the costume epic La Vie de Marianne (1994), a TV mini-series
which drew one of the highest-ever ratings
for the French channel Arte,
followed by La Fille seule/A Single Girl
(1995), a surprise hit in the USA, establishing
her in the words of NEW YORK TIMES
critic Stephen Holden as "a luminous natural screen presence."
Jacquot told the almost stream-of-conscience
tale of Valerie (the titular Single Girl) in real-time,
following the hotel worker in and out of rooms
on her first day of work as she ponders
her new pregnancy and her relationship with a boyfriend
whom she has instructed to wait in a cafe.
Returning to the cafe, she breaks off the affair,
choosing independence and life as a single mother
over what she perceives as a
less satisfying alternative. Subsequently, Jacquot's
Marianne (1997), a 90-minute feature distillation
from his 1994 mini-series, served almost as a
companion piece to A Single Girl,
showcasing Ledoyen's
appealing presence as a 15-year-old
orphan with beauty and smarts to spare
who receives proposals of marriage
from all quarters while sympathetic viewers
root for her not to accept any.
Ledoyen also added to her
following with popular portrayals as
the love object in Edward Yang's
clever Taipei-made spy comedy Mahjong (1996)
and as another pregnant girl, this
time in a middle-class family, in Claude Chabrol's
thriller La Ceremonie/The
Ceremony (1996), co-starring
Isabelle Huppert.
Much as Jacques Demy had done for
Catherine
Deneuve in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
(1964), the Demy-like musical Jeanne and
the Perfect Guy (1998) provided
an almost uninterrupted homage to Ledoyen's
photogenic personality and physique. Part of the fine ensemble
for Assayas' Late August, Early September,
considered the director's most
mature effort to date, she
starred opposite Guillame Canet
(as her bartender boyfriend) in En
Plein coeur/In All Innocence
(both also 1998), a re-make of the
1958 Bardot
film En Cas de malheur
in which she played
an alluring thief (Bardot's role) who
has an affair with her lawyer. After making her English language
debut that year in the small role of a young mother
who gives up her child in A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries,
she increased her American exposure immeasurably
in The Beach (2000). The triangular love story
re-teamed her with Canet as a French couple
who encounter Leonardo DiCaprio
while backpacking through Thailand,
accompanying him in search of a utopian paradise.
She subsequently returned to French
television in a mini-series version of
Les Miserables (2000), starring Gerard Depardieu
and John Malkovich and acted in the acclaimed
comedic murder mystery 8 Women for which she won an ensemble award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2002.
