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Julie Delpy
Julie Delpy Cannes.jpg
Delpy at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival
Born (1969-12-21) 21 December 1969 (age 54)
Paris, France
Nationality French and American
Alma mater New York University
Occupation Actress, filmmaker, composer, singer-songwriter
Years active 1976–present
Spouse(s)
Dimitris Birbilis
(m. 2015)
Partner(s) Marc Streitenfeld (2007–2012)
Children 1

Julie Delpy (French: [ʒyli dɛlpi]; born 21 December 1969) is a French-American actress, filmmaker, composer, and singer-songwriter. She studied filmmaking at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and has directed, written, and acted in more than 30 films, including Europa Europa (1990), Voyager (1991), Three Colours: White (1993), the Before trilogy (1995, 2004, 2013), An American Werewolf in Paris (1997), and 2 Days in Paris (2007).

She has been nominated for three César Awards, two Online Film Critics Society Awards, and two Academy Awards. She moved to the United States in 1990 and became a US citizen in 2001.

Family

Delpy was born in Paris, the only child of Albert Delpy, a Vietnamese-born French actor and theater director, and Marie Pillet, a French actress in feature films and the avant-garde theater. In Delpy's 2007 film 2 Days in Paris, her character's mother was played by her real mother. Pillet died in 2009.

Julie's parents exposed her to the arts at an early age. She said:

I couldn't hope for better parents. They really raised me with a love of art, bringing me to museums and seeing things that a child wouldn't see at that age. I would see Ingmar Bergman movies when I was 9 and totally go for it. And they would bring me to see Francis Bacon's paintings, which I loved: so dark and at the same time it's so wonderful.

Film career

In 1984, at fourteen, Delpy was discovered by film director Jean-Luc Godard, who cast her in Détective (1985). Two years later she played the title role in Bertrand Tavernier's La Passion Béatrice (1987) and was nominated for a César Award for Most Promising Actress. She used her money from the film to pay for her first trip to New York City.

Julie Delpy 1991 -a
Delpy in 1991

Delpy became an international celebrity after starring in the 1990 film Europa Europa directed by Agnieszka Holland. In the film, she plays a young pro-Nazi who falls in love with the hero, Solomon Perel, not knowing he is Jewish. She did not speak German, so she performed her role in English and her dialogue was dubbed in.

Delpy subsequently appeared in several Hollywood and European films, including Voyager (1991) and The Three Musketeers (1993). In 1993, she was cast by director Krzysztof Kieślowski for the female lead in Three Colours: White, the second film in Kieślowski's Three Colors Trilogy. She also appeared briefly in the other two films—Blue and Red—in the same role. That year, she also appeared with Brendan Fraser and Donald Sutherland in the Percy Adlon feature Younger and Younger. In 1994, she starred with Eric Stoltz in Roger Avary's directorial debut Killing Zoe, a cult heist film capturing the Generation X zeitgeist.

She achieved wider recognition for her role opposite Ethan Hawke in director Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise (1995). It received glowing reviews and was considered one of the most significant films of the '90s independent film movement. Its success led to Delpy's casting in the 1997 American film An American Werewolf in Paris.

She reprised her Before Sunrise character, Céline, with a brief animated appearance in Waking Life (2001), and again in the sequels Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013). The initial follow-up movie earned Delpy, who co-wrote the script, her first Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

In late 2001, she appeared alongside comedian Martin Short in the 30-minute short film CinéMagique, a theatre-show attraction presented several times daily at Walt Disney Studios Park in Disneyland Paris. She attended the park's March 2002 opening and the inauguration of the film-based attraction, where she starred as Marguerite—a female actress with whom Short's character, George, falls in love as he stumbles through countless classic movies. CinéMagique won the 2002 Themed Entertainment Association award for Outstanding Themed Attraction.

In 2009, Delpy starred in The Countess as the title character Elizabeth Báthory. Her third film as a director, it also starred Daniel Brühl and William Hurt.

Writing and directing

Delpy began being interested in a film-directing career when still a child, and enrolled in a summer directing course at New York University. She wrote and directed the short film Blah Blah Blah in 1995 which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2004, she co-wrote Before Sunset, a sequel to the 1995 movie Before Sunrise, with director Richard Linklater and co-star Ethan Hawke. Describing the experience, she said, "I'm not a feminist wearing overalls and hating the male gender. But I'm a definite feminist. I don't want to make Before Sunset into a little male fantasy, ever." She received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for her work on the film.

She made her feature length directorial debut in 2002 with Looking for Jimmy, which she also wrote and produced. In 2007 she directed, wrote, edited, and co-produced the original score for 2 Days in Paris, co-starring Adam Goldberg. It also features Delpy's real-life parents, Marie Pillet and Albert Delpy, as her character's parents.

Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, red carpet for the premiere of "Before Midnight" (cropped)
Delpy with frequent co-star Ethan Hawke in 2013

In 2011 she wrote and directed Le Skylab, which received a theatrical release in France but failed to find distribution in the U.S. In 2012 she released 2 Days in New York, a sequel to her 2007 film 2 Days in Paris, starring Delpy and actor Chris Rock in a role she said she wrote specifically for him. In 2013, she reunited with Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke to write Before Midnight, the sequel to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. She again starred with Hawke, and the film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. It screened out of competition at the Berlin International Film Festival and was released in May 2013. Delpy, Linklater and Hawke were later nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards.

Lolo was Delpy's second French-language feature film, and the first she'd directed since 2 Days in New York. She was also slated to write and direct the HBO movie Cancer Vixen, starring Cate Blanchett as Marisa Acocella Marchetto, a cartoonist for The New Yorker who is diagnosed with cancer. The project has yet to materialize as of 2020. In early 2014, Delpy announced her next writing-directing project would be A Dazzling Display of Splendor and focus on a family of vaudeville performers. It has also failed to enter production as of 2020.

Delpy courted controversy in 2016 when the Oscar nominations included no Black honorees. "Two years ago, I said something about the Academy being very white male, which is the reality, and I was slashed to pieces by the media ... It's funny—women can't talk. I sometimes wish I were African-American because people don't bash them afterward." She later apologized for the comment.

Music

Delpy is also a musical artist. Three tracks from her 2003 album Julie Delpy—"A Waltz For A Night," "An Ocean Apart," and "Je t'aime tant"—were featured in Before Sunset. She composed the original score for 2 Days in Paris in which she performed Marc Collin's "Lalala" over the closing credits. She also wrote the music for her 2009 film The Countess.

Personal life

Delpy moved to New York in 1990 and moved to Los Angeles a few years later. She has been a naturalized US citizen since 2001, although she also retains her French citizenship. She divides her time between Paris and Los Angeles. From 2007 to 2012 she was in a relationship with German film composer Marc Streitenfeld. Their son, Leo Streitenfeld, was born in January 2009.

In 2015 she married Dimitris Birbilis.

Delpy has expressed her commitment to correcting inaccurate assumptions regarding feminism, telling IndieWire "I'm very dedicated to feminism [but] even if I'm a feminist, I don't think all women are perfect. If we're equal to men, we are also imperfect like men ... [Some men] try to say [feminists] think that women are better than men, and I want to tell them, 'no'." In a 2007 interview with Jan Lisa Huttner, she said, "I was raised by a feminist, so I'm not a feminist. I don't need to be. I’m equal to men. I have no issues with the idea that I'm the same as a man. I have my differences. But outside of this, my consciousness, my capacity at creating, my capacity at doing things is the same as a man." However, in a 2012 interview with Emily Greenhouse in The New Yorker, she said, "You know, I've been raised by feminists, and I'm such a feminist, there's no way I'm not going to be feminist, because my core is so deeply feminist that I can even make sexist comments about women, and I feel still a feminist."

Delpy has said she has been plagued by health problems since childhood and had to wear callipers at age eight. She also occasionally experiences migraines and panic attacks.

Filmography

As actress

Year Title Role Notes
1978 Guerres civiles en France Credited as Julie Pillet
Segment La semaine sanglante
1982 Niveau moins trois Short film
1985 Classique Short film
1985 Détective Wise young girl
1985 L'Amour ou presque Melie
1986 Mauvais Sang Lise English: Bad Blood
Nominated—César Award for Most Promising Actress
1987 Beatrice Beatrice de Cortemart French: La Passion Béatrice
Nominated—César Award for Most Promising Actress
1987 King Lear Virginia (uncredited)
1988 L'autre nuit Marie
1989 La noche oscura Virgin Mary English: The Dark Night
1989 Trouble Short film
1990 Europa Europa Leni
1991 Les dents de ma mère Julie Short film
1991 Voyager Sabeth Nominated—European Film Award for Best Actress
1992 Warsaw - Year 5703 Fryda
1993 The Three Musketeers Constance
1993 Younger and Younger Melodie
1993 Killing Zoe Zoe
1993 Three Colours: Blue Dominique (cameo appearance)
1994 Three Colours: White Dominique
1994 Three Colours: Red Dominique (cameo appearance)
1995 Blah Blah Blah Short film Also as writer, director, and producer
1995 Before Sunrise Céline Nominated—MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss
1996 Tykho Moon Lena
1997 Les mille merveilles de l'univers Eva Purpur English: The Thousand Wonders of the Universe
1997 An American Werewolf in Paris Serafine Pigot
1997 Alleys and Motorways Video
1998 The Treat Francesca
1998 L.A. Without a Map Julie
1998 Crime and Punishment Sonia Television film
1999 True Love Television film
1999 The Passion of Ayn Rand Barbara Branden Television film
1999 But I'm a Cheerleader Lipstick Lesbian
2000 Sand Lill
2001 MacArthur Park Wendy
2001 Waking Life Céline
2001 Beginner's Luck Anya
2001 ER Nicole Television program, 7 episodes
2002 Villa des roses Louise Creteur
2002 Looking for Jimmy Al Also as writer, director, and producer
2002 CinéMagique Marguerite Disney Theme Park Attraction
2003 Notting Hill Anxiety Festival Charlotte
2004 Before Sunset Céline Also as writer and composer
Empire Award for Best Actress
San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress
Nominated—National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress
Nominated—Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress
Nominated—Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress
2004 Frankenstein Caroline Frankenstein Miniseries
2005 Broken Flowers Sherry
2006 The Legend of Lucy Keyes Jeanne Cooley
2006 The Hoax Nina van Pallandt
2006 Guilty Hearts Charlotte
2007 The Air I Breathe Gina
2007 2 Days in Paris Marion Also as writer, director, and producer
2009 The Countess Erzsébet Báthory Also as writer, director, and producer
2011 Skylab Anna Also as writer and director
2012 2 Days in New York Marion Also as writer and director
2013 Before Midnight Céline Nominated—Detroit Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress
Nominated—Dublin Film Critics' Circle Award for Best Actress
Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical
Nominated—Guardian Film Award for Best Actor
Nominated—Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead
Nominated—National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress (Runner-Up)
Nominated—Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress
Nominated—Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress
2015 Avengers: Age of Ultron Madame B.
2015 Lolo Violette Also as writer and director
2016 Wiener-Dog Dina
2017 The Bachelors Carine
2019 My Zoe Isabelle Also director and writer
2021 On the Verge Justine 12 episodes; also creator, executive producer, writer, and director
2023 The Lesson Hélène Sinclair

As filmmaker

Year Title Director Writer Producer Composer Notes
1995 Before Sunrise No Uncredited No No
Blah Blah Blah Yes Yes No No Short film
2002 Looking for Jimmy Yes Yes Yes No Also editor
2004 J'ai peur, j'ai mal, je meurs Yes Yes No Yes Short film
2004 Before Sunset No Yes No Yes Nominated—Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominated—National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Screenplay
Nominated—Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominated—Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominated—Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay
2007 2 Days in Paris Yes Yes Yes Yes Also editor
Prix Jacques Prévert du Scénario for Best Original Screenplay
Nominated—César Award for Best Original Screenplay
Nominated—European Film Awards Audience Award for Best Film
Nominated—Independent Spirit Award for Best First Film
Nominated—Globe de Cristal for Best Film
2009 The Countess Yes Yes Yes Yes
2011 Skylab Yes Yes No No
2012 2 Days in New York Yes Yes Yes Yes
2013 Before Midnight No Yes No No AARP Award for Best Screenwriter
Broadcast Film Critics Association — Louis XIII Genius Award
Dublin Film Critics' Circle Award for Best Screenplay
Hollywood Film Award for Screenwriter of the Year
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Screenplay
National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Screenplay
San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Women Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay
Nominated—Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominated—Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominated—Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominated—Denver Film Critics Society Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominated—Detroit Film Critics Society Award for Best Screenplay
Nominated—Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay
Nominated—Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominated—St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Award for Best Screenplay
Nominated—San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominated—Satellite Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominated—Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominated—Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
2013 Making a Scene No Yes No No Short film
2015 Lolo Yes Yes No No 72nd Venice International Film Festival - Laguna Sud Award for Best Film
2019 My Zoe Yes Yes No No Nominated—2019 Toronto International Film Festival - Platform Prize
2021 On the Verge Yes Yes Yes No TV series
Also creator and executive producer

Awards and nominations

Year Award Category Nominated work Result
1987 César Award Most Promising Actress Mauvais sang Nominated
1988 La Passion Béatrice Nominated
1991 European Film Award Best Actress The Voyager Nominated
1995 MTV Movie Award Best Kiss Before Sunrise Nominated
2004 San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award Best Actress Before Sunset Won
2005 Academy Award Best Adapted Screenplay Nominated
2005 Writers Guild of America Award Best Adapted Screenplay Nominated
2005 Empire Award Best Actress Won
2005 Independent Spirit Award Best Screenplay Nominated
2005 Online Film Critics Society Award Best Actress Nominated
Best Adapted Screenplay Nominated
2007 Mons International Festival of Love Films Award Coup de Coeur 2 Days in Paris Won
2008 César Award Best Original Screenplay Nominated
2014 Golden Globe Best Actress - Motion Picture Comedy or Musical Before Midnight Nominated
2014 Academy Award Best Adapted Screenplay Nominated

See also

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