Marion Cotillard… Where have you been all of my life?!

Okay, so you’re a huge star in Europe, but I’ve never been there, and my viewing of foreign films is usually limited to those English-dubbed Godzilla movies (occasionally a few moments of some subtitled Euro-pic if I happen to catch a glimpse of nipple while flipping through the premium channels).

But there you were at the Academy Awards, not just looking pretty on my television but also actually winning something! Best Actress, no less. For some movie called La Vie en Rose about a singer named Edith Piaf (who I have also never heard of, by the way).

After seeing you so overwhelmed to accept your golden statue, I had to instantly go to the ‘puter and Google you. That puts you in the same league as Penelope Cruz and Aishwarya Rai, two international actresses I felt compelled to learn more about after seeing for the first time. Who says Americans are shallow and ignorant about foreign stuff?!

I found out I’d actually seen some movies you were in before. Well, one. Tim Burton’s Big Fish. And now I know to rent that chick flick, er, movie A Very Long Affair and A Good Year, where Russell Crowe goes to France all stressed out and then mellows after hooking up with you.

It’s hard to believe you’ve been on the scene for so long, or that you’re 32. I could have sworn you were a fresh-faced It girl, not that you’d been at this since 1993.

The Marion Cotillard Dossier

Born: September 30, 1975.

She’s an ecologist and a spokesperson for Greenpeace.

She had to learn how to sing in one month to play a character named Marie in the movie Pretty Things. She actually played twin sisters with a love-hate relationship, their personalities completely opposed.

She said if she had not been an actress, she would have liked to become a singer.

Cotillard said she will be relieved when the awards season is over because she is sick of answering questions about herself. She was reportedly alarmed by the countless interviews she was required to sit through while promoting the Edith Piaf biopic, having done minimal promotion for the film in her native France. She was quoted as saying, “I spent all that (time) talking about myself which is not what I prefer to do in life. It’s very long and it’s much longer than in France. You don’t do this, you don’t campaign, and so that was kind of weird, to sort of answer the same question about myself. I mean, the life is of the movie going on but the movie doesn’t need us anymore.”

Cotillard is only the second woman in Oscar history to win the Best Actress Oscar in a foreign-language film; the other was Sophia Loren in 1961.

She wasn’t the only non-American to win an Oscar this year. Britain’s Daniel Day Lewis and Tilda Swinton won Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress nods while Spain’s Javier Bardem won Best Supporting Actor. The American actors spent the night watching their colleagues from abroad called to the podium. Those Cotillard beat in her category were Cate Blanchett, Julie Christie, Laura Linney, and Ellen Page.

She won the Best Actress award for her performance in La Vie en Rose at France’s Cesar awards, a British Bafra and a Golden Globe (for Best Actress in a comedy/musical) among her string of acting accolades.

We are curious to see if her post-Oscar acting choices will mimic those of Halle Berry, who followed her Oscar win by becoming a Bond girl and Catwoman. There’s a report Cotillard is already making a movie with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, starring as John Dillinger’s torch singer girlfriend in a Depression-era crime drama directed by Michael Mann.

She’s also set to star with Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson, and Sophia Loren in the Woody Allen romantic comedy/drama Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Note: A steamy ménage a trios sequence between Bardem, Cruz and Johansson generated buzz, as well as Bardem’s reported off-screen romance with Cruz.

Cotillard has also been linked to Bardem and Cruz in the film adaptation of the Tony Award winning musical Nine. However, pre-production on the film, to be directed by Rob Marshall, was halted due to the Hollywood writer’s strike.

Unfortunately for her, Cotillard’s big splash to most of the world, the Oscars telecast, did not have its usual reach. In fact, ratings for most of the broadcast awards shows have been in the tanks. Still, we’re sure the actress will see a career boost from the red-carpet exposure.

Quote

“You have changed my career as an actress. You have simply changed my life. You have written the most beautiful role in the world.”

- All images, text and information is sourced from web sites deemed to be in the public domain.