Best Known As: The star of the film La Femme Nikita
Actress Anne Parillaud made it big in France and on the international art-house circuit, but still best known for playing the title role in La Femme Nikita (1990) -- a hit woman with high heels. The performance won her a César Award as Best Actress. That flush of international recognition led to a few more American films, including Map of the Human Heart (1992) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1998, starring Leonardo DiCaprio). She married electronic composer/musician Jean-Michel Jarre in 2005 and has collaborated with him on recordings and performances.
Career Highlights: La Femme Nikita, Map of the Human Heart, Che ora è?
First Major Screen Credit: Écoute Voir... (1978)
Biography
French beauty Anne Parillaud paid her dues in teen pictures and B-dramas before earning international acclaim as Luc Besson's unforgettable Nikita (La Femme Nikita) (1990). Raised in Paris, Parillaud made her film debut as "the girl with the kitten" in Un Amour de Sable (1977). Still in high school, she hoped to pursue a law career until a more substantial role in Michel Lang's teen comedy L'Hôtel de la Plage (The Beach Hotel) (1978) (which she filmed during summer break) made her love acting. Parillaud earned a reputation for playing promiscuous teens in Écoute Voir (Look See) (1978), Girls (1980), and Patrizia (Patricia) (1980). She went on to star in two thrillers for her then-boyfriend Alain Delon, Pour La Peau d'un Flic (For a Cop's Hide) (1981), and Le Battant (The Cache) (1983). In 1985, while taking a break from acting to reinvent her image, Parillaud met director Luc Besson at a Paris film festival. They moved in together and had a daughter in 1987. In the meantime, Besson wrote Nikita, the story of a drug-addicted murderess who is transformed into a political assassin by a secret government agency. To prepare for the violent crime drama, the actress slept in the Paris metro, took judo lessons, and learned how to fire a handgun. She earned a César for her performance in the film, which was France's second highest grossing picture of 1990 and spawned both an American remake and a television series. Parillaud and Besson ended their five-year romance shortly after Nikita's release, and the actress left France to make her U.S. debut in John Landis' failed vampire comedy Innocent Blood (1982). She then starred in the equally disastrous Map of the Human Heart (1992), before returning to Europe to play Béatrice Dalle's sister in the unremarkable À la Folie (Six Days, Six Nights) (1994). Parillaud gave stand-out performances as an oppressed mother in Frankie Starlight (1995) and as a rich seductress in Passage à L'Acte (1996), but was still unable to match the success she had as Nikita. She did not fare any better opposite Gabriel Byrne and Leonardo Di Caprio in the flop The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) or with William Baldwin and Graham Greene in Shattered Image (1998). Yet, the indomitable and talented Parillaud continued to work steadily into the new millennium, appearing in Claude Lelouch's romantic comedy Une Pour Toutes (One 4 All) (2000), Olivier Marchal's action flick Gangsters (2002), and Catherine Breillat's farce Sex Is Comedy (2002). ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, All Movie Guide
Anne Parillaud (French pronunciation: [an paʁiˈjo]) (born 6 May 1960 in Paris) is a French actress, who has appeared in 30 films since 1977. She is married to Jean Michel Jarre. She has a daughter with ex-husband Luc Besson, Juliette, born in 1987 and two sons, Lou and Theo with film producer Mark Allan.
She is best known internationally for her role as Nikita in the movie of the same name.
A native Parisian and still a resident there, Parillaud was born 6 May 1960. While in school she studied ballet and her ambition was to become a lawyer, but a role during summer vacation - when she was only 16 - in Michel Lang's L'hôtel de la plage launched her into the world of film.
She is rather guarded regarding her private life and biographical details, preferring in her interviews to expound on metaphysical, as opposed to personal, questions. She believes her life outside of films - where she likes "dancing, talking with friends, things like that" - is prosaic: "Me, I don't like myself much. I'm not interesting. The pleasure for me is in the abandonment of myself. As an actress I want to give everything I can. That is my pleasure." Additionally, she claims, "Fun' is not in my vocabulary. I have a problem being light, saying 'That's okay, that's fine.' I mean, no. It has to be always strong, always extreme, always passionate. And fun, it's nowhere. It's like 'cool'. I have no idea what that means because I am not someone 'cool'. I'm someone who tries to live by impulse first, and not by brain. If the extension of fun is being crazy, I like it. To break the rules, to let in crazy thoughts. But there has to be that extension."
Her willingness and even impulse to "break the rules, to let in crazy thoughts" has often kept the French tabloid press in a lather, as during her past romantic liaisons with Alain Delon and Luc Besson. She and Besson have a daughter, but the couple separated shortly after he directed her in Nikita.
Nikita was an especially intense experience for Parillaud: "For a while she was in me like a demon. I would do things I normally would not do. She was awkward, depressed, full of despair. But to me there was also a spiritual underline to Nikita. In a very excessive way she is a loudspeaker of the youth of society today. She destroys herself because she doesn't believe in anything on Earth." In preparation for the role, she underwent three months of judo lessons and target practice to hone her skills as a government assassin: "I hate guns, I hate violence, I hate the judo." Her early ballet training also came in handy for one amusing scene though she modestly downplays her physical gifts, saying only, "I have a chewing gum kind of body. I just forget about the bones." Despite the glamour and danger of her character, Parillaud cautions, "It never happens to me, this kind of story."
In selecting films and directors to work with, she is rather particular, though her one criterion for choosing roles seems rather simple on the surface: it must touch her heart. Though hesitant to name names, when asked which directors she prefers to work with she responds: "Their common points would be authenticity. They aren't afraid to be unconventional ... to do just what they want and what they feel. (Parillaud brings her hand to her heart) It means there's some art in there, not just commerce."
After the international success of Nikita Parillaud left France to star in three films abroad: Map of the Human Heart, Innocent Blood and Frankie Starlight. Of the experience of playing a vampire in John Landis's Innocent Blood she has said: "I fell in love with Marie in Innocent Blood because she wasn't born a vampire; she never decided she wanted to be. For me, it was a parable to talk about how you deal with this problem, which is when you are different. You think or you live or you want something different from everyone else. People don't follow you, because it's scary. You are quite alone in your choices."
