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Mélanie Laurent
Laurent at a premiere for Inglourious Basterds in August 2009
Born	February 21, 1983 (1983-02-21) (age 26) Paris, France
Occupation	Actress, Director, Writer
Years active	1999–present
Domestic partner(s)	Julien Boisselier (2005–2009) Damien Rice (2009-present)

Mélanie Laurent (born 21 February 1983) is a French actress, director and writer.

Early life and career

Laurent was born in Paris, the daughter of a ballerina^[1] and a voiceover actor (who dubs the character Ned Flanders in the French version of The Simpsons).^[2] Laurent is Jewish,^[3][4][5] and has both Ashkenazi and Tunisian Sephardic ancestry.^[5] A grandfather survived deportation by the Nazis.^[5] Her maternal grandparents were film poster editors.^[1] She grew up in the 9th arrondissement of Paris and was immersed from birth in the arts.^[1]

Laurent has appeared in 20 films between 1999 and 2009. She starred in the film Je vais bien, ne t'en fais pas (2006), for which she won a César Award for Most Promising Actress. In 2006, Laurent and Belgian actor Jérémie Renier were awarded France's Romy Schneider and Jean Gabin Prizes for "most promising actor and actress."^[6]

In 2008, Laurent directed and wrote De moins en moins which was nominated for Best Short Film at the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a 7-minutes film about a patient who, in front of her psychiatrist, "remembers less and less"^[7]... and À ses pieds,^[8] an erotic short film aired on the French television channel Canal+ on 25-26 October 2008.^[8]

Laurent was scheduled to direct her first play, Mi-cuit cœur pistache (name of a dessert she particularly likes) in January 2009 at the Théâtre Marigny in Paris. She had to abandon the project during the preparations and rehearsals when she was cast as Shosanna Dreyfus in the Quentin Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds. Her then-partner Julien Boisselier, as well as Marie Denarnaud, Mélanie Doutey and Louise Monot were to act in the production while short movie clips were to be projected on stage, some of them shot at the nightclub Le Baron, which Laurent used to frequent during the writing period.^[9]

Laurent also had planned another feature film, Putain de pluie !, whose script she co-wrote with Morgan Perez and which she intended to direct, produced by Alain Attal's Productions du Trésor. Originally set for filming in the spring of 2009, it was postponed because of her work on Inglourious Basterds.^{[9] [10]} Knowing that she could speak French and had already acted in French in one of the short films in Paris, i love you she offered the first role to Natalie Portman who declined because of the language of the script.^[7]

Personal life

Laurent had a long relationship with fellow French actor Julien Boisselier. She describes recording artist Damien Rice and Tarantino as her two "masters".^[11] With Rice she is recording her first album between Woodstock, New York and his home in Ireland. Living in his home in Ireland inspired her to maintain a compost heap and eat organic food.^{[12] [1]}

Laurent has recently visited a Climate Defenders Camp in the peatlands of the Indonesian Rainforest with Greenpeace activists. She is also one of the Climate Ambasadors for Kofi Annan's Global Humanitarian Forum "Tck Tck Tck" Campaign.^{[13 ]}

Filmography

As actress

As director and writer

References

External links

• Mélanie Laurent at the Internet Movie Database
• Only Mélanie : the first French site dedicated to Mélanie Laurent, now in English !
• Site dédié à la jeune actrice Mélanie Laurent
• Mélanie Laurent at AlloCiné (French)