Sandrine Bonnaire

Sandrine Bonnaire (born 31 May 1967) is a celebrated French actress, film director, and screenwriter whose career spans more than four decades and includes over forty feature films. She was born in Gannat, a small town in the Allier department of the Auvergne region, into a working‑class family as the seventh of eleven children, and later grew up in Grigny, Essonne, an experience that informed her gritty, naturalistic performance style. Bonnaire burst onto the cinematic scene at the age of sixteen when she was cast by Maurice Pialat in the 1983 coming‑of‑age drama À Nos Amours, earning the César Award for Most Promising Actress the following year and establishing her as a bold new voice in French cinema. Her breakthrough international role arrived in 1985 with Agnès Varda’s Vagabond, where she embodied a wandering, morally ambiguous heroine; the performance secured her a second César for Best Actress and contributed to the film’s Golden Lion triumph at Venice, though the jury stopped short of awarding her the Volpi Cup. Subsequent collaborations with auteurs such as Pialat (Under the Sun of Satan, 1987), Patrice Leconte (Monsieur Hire, 1989), and Claude Chabrol (La Cérémonie, 1995) solidified her reputation for intense, emotionally raw portrayals, the latter earning her a Volpi Cup for Best Actress alongside Isabelle Huppert.

In the new millennium Bonnaire expanded her artistic palette by directing and screenwriting, debuting with the 2012 feature J’enrage de son absence, which she also starred in opposite former partner William Hurt. Her later acting credits include roles in East/West (1999), Intimate Strangers (2004), and the socially charged Prendre le large (2017), while she continued to receive accolades such as an Honorary Magritte Award in 2017. Bonnaire’s personal life reflects her independent spirit; she has two daughters—one with William Hurt and another with her former husband Guillaume Laurant, whom she married in 2003 and divorced in 2015. As of 2024 she began filming the project Slow Joe, confirming her enduring presence and influence in contemporary French cinema.