Adjani came to international prominence for her portrayal ofAdèle Hugo inThe Story of Adele H., for which she was nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Actress at age 20, becoming theyoungest nominee in the category at the time. She later collected a second Best Actress nomination for portrayingCamille Claudel inCamille Claudel, thus becoming the first French actress to receive two Academy Award nominations for foreign-language films. Adjani also won theCannes Film Festival'sBest Actress Award for her performances inPossession andQuartet (1981), which makes her the only actress to win a joint award for two films in the same competition slate, and theBerlinale'sSilver Bear for Best Actress forCamille Claudel.
Adjani's parents met near the end of World War II, when her father was in the French Army and stationed in Germany. They married and her mother returned with him to Paris, despite not speaking a word of French.[8][9] She asked him to take Cherif as his first name as she thought it sounded more "American".[10]
Isabelle grew upbilingual, speaking French and German fluently,[11][12][13] inGennevilliers, a northwestern suburb ofParis, where her father worked in a garage.[14] After winning a school recitation contest, Adjani began acting by the age of 12 in amateur theater. She successfully passed herbaccalauréat and was auditing classes at theUniversity of Vincennes in 1976.[3]
Adjani had a younger brother, Éric, who was a photographer. He died on 25 December 2010, aged 53.[15][16]
Adjani at the35th César Awards, 27 February 2010Adjani at the Hôtel Amour, 2012
At the age of 14, Adjani starred in her first motion picture,Le Petit Bougnat [fr] (1970).[17] She first gained fame as a classical actress at theComédie-Française, which she joined in 1972. She was praised for her interpretation of Agnès, the main female role inMolière'sL'École des femmes. She soon left the theatre to pursue a film career.
After minor roles in several films, she enjoyed modest success in the 1974 filmLa Gifle (The Slap), whichFrançois Truffaut saw. He immediately cast her in her first major role inThe Story of Adèle H. (1975), a project that he had finished writing five years prior but had waited to cast the right actress for the part. Critics unanimously praised her performance,[3] with the American criticPauline Kael describing her acting talents as "prodigious".[18]
Only 19 when she made the film, Adjani was nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, becoming theyoungest Best Actress nominee at the time (a record she held for almost 30 years). She quickly received offers for roles inHollywood films, such asWalter Hill's 1978 crime thrillerThe Driver. She had previously turned down the chance to star in films likeThe Other Side of Midnight. She had described Hollywood as a "city of fiction" and said, "I'm not an American. I didn't grow up with that will to win an award." Truffaut on the other hand said, "France is too small for her. I think Isabelle is made for American cinema."[3] She agreed to makeThe Driver because she was an admirer of Hill's first filmHard Times. Adjani said:
I think he is wonderful, very much in the tradition ofHoward Hawks, lean and spare. The story is contemporary but also very stylized, and the roles that Ryan and I play are like Bogart and Bacall. We are both gamblers in our souls and we do not show our emotions or say a lot. For us, talk is cheap. I am really quite a mysterious girl in this film, with no name and no background. And I must say that it is restful not to have a life behind me; this way, I don't have to dig deep to play the part. All I know is that life for me is gambling and I am a loser. I have what people call a poker face.[19]
The film was seen more than 1.1 million times in Adjani's native France but did not do as well in the US.[20]
She played Lucy in the German directorWerner Herzog's 1979 remake ofNosferatu which was well-received critically and performed well at box offices in Europe.[21] Roger Ebert loved the film, calling Herzog's casting of Adjani one of his "masterstrokes" in the film. He wrote that she "is used here not only for her facial perfection but for her curious quality of seeming to exist on an ethereal plane."[22] The cast and the crew filmed both English- and German-language versions simultaneously upon request of20th Century Fox, the American distributor,[23] as Kinski and Bruno Ganz could act more confidently in their native language.
In 1983, she won her second César for her depiction of a vengeful woman in the French blockbusterOne Deadly Summer, and starred withMichel Serrault in the black diamond thrillerDeadly Circuit directed byClaude Miller. That same year, Adjani released the French pop albumPull marine, written and produced bySerge Gainsbourg. She then starred in a music video for the hit title song,Pull Marine, which was directed byLuc Besson.
Adjani also drew controversy at the1983 Cannes Film Festival when she refused to attend a traditional photocall after the press conference forOne Deadly Summer. Adjani was annoyed at the time by the intrusion of photographers into her private life. The photographers in Cannes boycotted Adjani upon her arrival on the red carpet for the premiere, at which point they put down their cameras and turned their backs to her.[24]
In 1988, she co-produced and starred in a biopic of the sculptorCamille Claudel. She received her third César and second Oscar nomination for her role in the film, becoming the first French actress to receive two Oscar nominations. The film was also nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
She received her fourth César for the 1994 filmQueen Margot, an ensemble epic directed byPatrice Chéreau. She received her fifth César forSkirt Day (2009), the most that any actress has received. The film features her as a middle school teacher in a troubled French suburb who takes her class hostage when she accidentally fires off a gun she found on one of her students. It was premiered on the French Arte channel on 20 March 2009, attaining a record 2.2 million viewers) and then in movie theaters on 25 March 2009.[25] The film was her return to the cinema after eight years of absence.[26]
In 2010, she made an appearance in the social comedyMammuth, from directorsBenoît Delépine andGustave Kervern, and in which she played the phantom ofGérard Depardieu's first love.[27] The same year, she lent her voice to the character ofMother Gothel in the French version of the animated filmTangled.[28] In 2011, she co-starred inDe Force, the first film directed by Frank Henry. She embodied the commander Clara Damico, head of the brigade for the repression of banditry.[29]
In 1979, Adjani had a son, Barnabé Saïd-Nuytten, with the cinematographerBruno Nuytten.[11] She later hired Nuytten to direct her projectCamille Claudel, a biopic of thesculptor who was the lover ofRodin.[14]
Adjani has been vocal againstanti-immigrant and anti-Algerian sentiments in France.[14] In 2009, she criticized statements by PopeBenedict XVI, who claimed that condoms are not an effective method ofAIDS prevention.[33]
In September 2009, she signed a petition in support ofRoman Polanski, calling for his release after he was arrested in Switzerland in relation to hissexual abuse case.[34]
In 2017, Adjani was interviewed byVincent Josse on the French public radio stationFrance Inter. During the interview, she expressed hervaccine hesitancy and opposition to mandatory vaccination.[35]
^Isabelle Adjani : "Mon père,kabyle, s'était engagé dans l'armée française à 16 ans, et c'est en remontant d'Italie jusqu'en Bavière à la fin de la seconde guerre mondiale qu'il rencontre et séduit ma mère"Interview with Isabelle Adjani,Télérama, 31 March 2009
^"A German woman met in Bavaria who was married at the end of the Second World War by Mohammed Adjani, a Kabyle soldier in the French army", Jean de La Guérivière,Amère Méditerranée: Le Maghreb et nous, Seuil, 2004, p.391
^"My mother was Bavarian. She felt very uncomfortable in France, where she had arrived without speaking a word of French. She couldn't stand the fact that her husband was Algerian. She said he was of Turkish origin and I believed her. Between my parents, there was conjugal racism. My mother used to call my father a jerk and my father would say, "You dirty Kraut." His name was Mohammed but my mother had forced him to change his first name. On our mailbox, there was: Cherif Adjani. My mother thought it looked American."Adjani la vérité, Interview Isabelle Adjani,Le Nouvel Observateur, 1985
Adjani, Isabelle (1980).Isabelle Adjani in : Jean-Luc Douin (Hrsg.):Comédiennes aujourd'hui : au micro et sous le regard. Paris: Lherminier.ISBN2-86244-020-5
Austin, Guy (2003).Foreign bodies: Jean Seberg and Isabelle Adjani, S. 91–106 in: ders.,Stars in Modern French Film. London: Arnold.ISBN0-340-76019-2
Austin, Guy (2006).Telling the truth can be a dangerous business : Isabelle Adjani, race and stardom, in :Remapping World Cinema : Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, herausgegeben von Stephanie Dennison und Song Hwee Lim, London: Wallflower Press.ISBN1-904764-62-2
Halberstadt, Michèle (2002).Adjani aux pieds nus – Journal de la repentie. Paris: Editions Calmann-Lévy.ISBN2-7021-3293-6
Roques-Briscard, Christian (1987).La passion d'Adjani, Lausanne et al.: Favre.ISBN2-8289-0279-X
Zurhorst, Meinolf (1992).Isabelle Adjani : ihre Filme, ihr Leben. Heyne Film- und Fernsehbibliothek, Band 163. München: Heyne.ISBN9783453052383
Rissa, Alvaro (pseudonimo di Walter Lapini) (2015),Ode an Isabelle, inAntologia della letteratura greca e Latina, Genova: Il Melangolo.ISBN978-88-6983-004-4
