Irène
Marie Jacob (born July 15, 1966) is a French-born Swiss
actress.
Irène Jacob was born in Paris,
France, the youngest child after three brothers. She
comes from a highly educated and intellectual family,
her father is a physicist, her mother a psychologist,
and of her brothers, one is a musician and the other
two are scientists.
As an infant, her family moved to
Geneva, Switzerland where, as a young girl, she became
interested in the arts, making her stage debut at
the age of 11. She attended the Geneva Conservatory
of Music, earned a degree in languages (she speaks
English, German, Italian and French), studied acting
in Paris at the prestigious Rue Blanche (the French
national drama academy) and at the Dramatic Studio
in London, England.
Three years after Ms. Jacob's return
to Paris, the then 21-year-old drama student obtained
her first movie role in the 1987 film Au revoir les
enfants followed by several more minor roles until
her big break came when Polish director Krzysztof
Kieslowski cast her in the lead role of his 1991 motion
picture, La Double vie de Véronique. For her
performance, Ms. Jacob won the Best Actress Award
at the Cannes Film Festival.
An introvert by nature, Jacob has
the remarkable ability to express the emotional turmoil
of her characters with very few words. This was very
evident when Kieslowski used her again to star alongside
Jean-Louis Trintignant in Three Colors: Red, the third
part of his highly acclaimed masterpiece, the Three
Colors trilogy. The film, and her performance, gained
huge international recognition bringing many offers
from major American motion-picture studios. Her highest
grossing US picture as of 2004 was U.S. Marshals (released
1997), in which she starred opposite Tommy Lee Jones.
Jacob's film career slowed down in
subsequent years, and after a series of independent,
mostly European, movies, she revived her theatre career.
Her 2000/2001 London West-End performance as the title
character in Madame Melville opposite Macaulay Culkin
was crucial to that development.
Filmography
Mille millièmes (Landlords) - 2002
Lettre d'une inconnue - 2001
Léaud l'unique - 2001
L’ Affaire Marcorelle - 2000
Londinium - 2000
The Pornographer: A Love Story - 2000
The Big Brass Ring - 1999
Cuisine chinoise - 1999
History Is Made at Night - 1999
My Life So Far - 1999
Cuisine américaine - 1998
U.S. Marshals - 1998
Incognito - 1997
Beyond The Clouds - 1996
All Men Are Mortal - 1995
Faire un film pour moi c'est vivre - 1995
Fugueuses - 1995
Othello - 1995
Par-delà les nuages - 1995
Victory - 1995
Le Moulin de Daudet - 1994
Predskazaniye - 1994
Trois couleurs: Rouge - 1994
The Secret Garden - 1993
Claude - 1992
Enak - 1992
La Double vie de Véronique - 1991
Le Secret de Sarah Tombelaine - 1991
Erreur de jeunesse - 1990
La Passion Van Gogh - 1990
La Veillée - 1990
Les Mannequins d'osier - 1989
La Bande des quatre - 1988
Au revoir les enfants - 1987
source from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
More Articles..
