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Mathieu Amalric (born October 25, 1965) is a three-time César Award winning French actor and film director, perhaps best known for his lead role in the four-time Academy Award nominated 2007 film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. He also has won the Étoile d'Or and the Lumiere Award, and is considered one of France's greatest contemporary actors. Mathieu Amalric is actor and director who has appeared in both French and American films. Scheduled to play villain Dominic Greene in 2008 James Bond film Quantum of Solace, Amalric has has been described by critics as "the Antoine Doniel of the 90s" due to his on-screen personality, which tends toward tragically romantic, quirky and intellectual roles. Described by one critic as an "Antoine Doinel for the '90s" who also evokes François Truffaut's feral Wild Child, Mathieu Amalric established himself as one of France's top young actors by playing intellectually-attuned young men dealing with fateful decisions regarding life and love. Born to Jacques Almaric, who has worked as an editorial journalist for the French newspapers Le Monde and Libération, and his wife Nicole Zand, a literary critic for Le Monde. His mother is Polish, and was born in the village where Roman Polanski had lived with his family before World War II. Amalric was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France, the son of journalists Nicole Zand, a literary critic for Le Monde, and Jacques Amalric, who has worked as a foreign affairs editor for Le Monde and Libération. Mathieu Amalric's mother was born in Poland to Jewish parents, and moved to France before World War II; she originates from the same village as director Roman Polanski's family. Amalric first gained fame in the film Ma Vie Sexuelle (My Sex Life...or How I Got Into an Argument), for which he won a César Award. Teaches at La Femis (French National Film School). He began his film career in his 20s, with a role as Julien in Les Favoris de la Lune (Favorites of the Moon), a French crime drama. During the 1990s, Amalric blossomed as a screen presence. Throughout this period, Amalric remained in French film, achieving roles in several movies including La Sentinel (The Sentinel) (1992), Le Journal du Seducteur (Diary of a Seducer) (1996) and Fin Aout, Debut Septembre (Late August, Early September) (1998). It was also during this time period that Amalric took his first foray into directing, with 1996's Mange Ta Soupe (Eat Your Soup), a comedy. In perhaps a semi-autobiographical series of sketches, the movie's main character returns home to his literary critic parents and self-absorbed sister with questions about life, which are met with the careless attitude of "mange ta soupe" (stop talking and just eat). Amalric would next direct in 2001's Le Stade de Wimbledon (Wimbledon Stadium), followed by La Chose Publique in 2003. Although he began appearing in films in the 1980s, Amalric became a more prominent cinematic presence in the 1990s, beginning with the comedy La Chasse aux Papillons (1992) and a small part in Arnaud Desplechin's Kafkaesque drama La Sentinelle (1992). One of a new generation of gifted French directors, Desplechin's My Sex Life. . .or How I Got into an Argument (1996) brought Amalric international renown, as well as the Most Promising Young Actor César, for his incisive performance as an irresolute academic who cannot settle his love life or his career. Talkative and book-smart, yet unwise, Amalric's Paul Dedalus personified inner paralysis amidst a complex range of characters that suggested with humor and canny emotion the roads he could possibly take. Continuing his collaborations with France's most esteemed filmmakers, Amalric worked with André Téchiné in Alice et Martin (1998) and played a writer facing a personal crossroads in Olivier Assayas' voluble, intimate character study Late August, Early September (1998). An experienced assistant director and editor as well as actor, Amalric made his own directorial debut with the low budget slice of life Mange Ta Soupe (1997). Directing did not distract Amalric from his acting career. He continued in movie roles, eventually crossing over into the American film scene with the Stephen Spielberg-directed Munich in 2005. The drama depicted the killing of Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972 by Black September gunmen. Considered controversial, the movie nonetheless earned Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations and brought Amalric into the U.S. film spotlight. The following year the actor appeared another American film, the Academy Award-winning Marie Antoinette. Returning to French-produced movies, Amalric achieved what is considered to be his greatest film success to date, the dramatic role of a paralysis victim in the movie Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (the Diving Bell and the Butterfly) in 2007. The film, a memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered from "locked-in syndrome", an almost total paralysis, included such unusual camera angles as as a slow opening and closing of the shutter to portray Bauby's visual vantage point. American actor Johnny Depp was originally considered for the role. The movie met with critical acclaim and earned more than two dozen awards and nominations. Amalric will once again appear in an American production with Quantum of Solace, the latest in the long-running James Bond movie series. The French actor will play villain Dominic Greene, who hides behind false-front company Green Planet to secretly restore a madman to political power. Due out in theatres in November 2008, Quantum of Solace is the sequel to 2006's Casino Royale. |
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