Adèle Exarchopoulos

Adèle Exarchopoulos (French: [adɛlɛɡzaʁkɔpulɔs]; born 22 November 1993) is a French actress. She had her career breakthrough starring as Adèle in the romance Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013); at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, she became the youngest person in the history of the festival to be awarded the Palme d'Or. She won it with her co-star Léa Seydoux.

Exarchopoulos won two César Awards for Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013) and All Your Faces (2023). She was also nominated for Cesars for her roles in Mandibles (2020) and Zero Fucks Given (2023). Her other notables roles feature her in such films as Racer and the Jailbird (2017), The White Crow (2018), Sibyl (2019), The Five Devils (2022), and Passages (2023). She voiced Ennui in the Pixar animated film Inside Out 2 (2024).

Early life

Exarchopoulos grew up in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, near the Place des Fêtes. Her mother is a French nurse. Her father is a French restaurant manager at the Palais omnisports de Paris-Bercy, film producer, and president of the company 1660 Productions. She is of Greek ancestry through her paternal great-grandfather, who was born there.

Career

2006–2012: Acting debut and early roles

In 2006, Exarchopoulos was spotted by an agent and made her first television appearance in an episode of the French police series R.I.S, police scientifique. At thirteen, she had a debuting film role in the 2007 film Boxes. She also appeared in the films Les Enfants de Timpelbach (2008), The Round Up (2010), Turk's Head (2010), Chez Gino (2011), Carré blanc (2011), Pieces of Me (2012), and I Used to Be Darker (2013).

2013–2019: Breakthrough and acclaim

She attracted international attention and critical acclaim for her performance in Blue Is the Warmest Colour, a 2013 film based on the 2010 French graphic novel of the same name. The film won the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Exarchopoulos and co-star Léa Seydoux were awarded the Palme d'Or alongside director Abdellatif Kechiche, becoming the only women apart from director Jane Campion to have won the award at the time; Exarchopoulos is the youngest person to ever receive the award. For her performance in Blue Is the Warmest Colour, she won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress, the César Award for Most Promising Actress, and the Trophée Chopard for Female Revelation of the Year, among dozens of other accolades.

She received critical praise and her performance was cited as one of the year's best. Indiewire critic Eric Kohn stated that her performance was the best female performance of 2013. Her performance was praised for its "rawness." Critic A.O. Scott of The New York Times wrote that she gives a performance with "astonishing sensitivity" adding "Ms. Exarchopoulos almost never departs from the camera's scrutiny, and her reality, her ways of seeing and feeling, define the many shades of Blue." Justin Chang of Variety declared, "The picture belongs to Exarchopoulos, completely inhabiting a role aptly named after the thesp herself; with her husky voice and sweet, reluctant smile, she plays virtually every emotion a director can demand of an actress, commanding the viewer's attention and sympathy at every minute". Exarchopoulos discussed her process with The New York Times, explaining: "Abdellatif tried to keep us close to reality. He asked us to play with our own emotions. For example, I kept my own voice. It's very subtle, very delicate, the things that are a part of you and the things that are a part of your character".

In March 2014, she was in consideration to play Tiger Lily in the Joe Wright directed fantasy film Pan but lost to Rooney Mara. She portrayed Judith, an aspiring teacher in the period drama film Les Anarchistes. The film premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival where Guy Lodge of Variety praised her chemistry with Tahar Rahim while also describing her performance as "attentive [and] quietly expressive." She then appeared in The Last Face alongside Javier Bardem and Charlize Theron, directed by Sean Penn, which premiered in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. That same year she acted in the Arnaud des Pallières directed French drama Orphan opposite Adèle Haenel. The film premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.

The following year she acted opposite Matthias Schoenaerts in the drama Racer and the Jailbird (2017), a film by Belgian film director Michaël R. Roskam. A.A. Dowd of The A.V. Club wrote, "[the film] taps into her magnetism: an underutilized fusion of glamour and ordinariness, holding the center of a film that feigns interest in character and story, when it's really all about the superficial pleasures". In 2018 she portrayed socialite Clara Saint opposite Oleg Ivenko as the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev in the biographical drama The White Crow directed by Ralph Fiennes. In 2019 she starred in the Justine Triet directed comedy-drama Sibyl alongside Virginie Efira. The film premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival where it competed for the Palme d'Or. In the film she portrays a movie actress having an affair with her costar.

2020–present

In 2020 she starred in the comedy Mandibles directed by Quentin Dupieux. In an interview with iO Donna she stated her role was inspired by Greta Thunberg. The film premiered at the 77th Venice International Film Festival with The Hollywood Reporter describing her performance as being "both deadpan and cartoonishly over-the-top, like Tex Avery by way of David Lynch." She went on to earn a nomination for the César Award for Best Supporting Actress. The next year she starred in the comedy-drama Zero Fucks Given (2021) playing a young woman who recently lost her job as a flight attendant. The film screened in the Critics' Week section at the 74th Cannes Film Festival where it received critical acclaim. Jordan Mintzer of The Hollywood Reporter wrote of her performance, "[the film] remains engrossing because of how committed Exarchopoulos is to the role." She was nominated for the César Award for Best Actress. She then starred in the fantasy drama The Five Devils directed by Léa Mysius which had its world premiere in the Directors' Fortnight section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Sophie Butcher of Empire described her as being "extraordinary" adding, "Her performance is one of taut physicality, balancing aloofness and vulnerability, and taps into more primal places".

In 2023, she acted in the Ira Sachs romance Passages opposite Franz Rogowski and Ben Whishaw. Sachs described her as a cross between Jeanne Moreau and Brigitte Bardot. Rex Reed of Observer declared, "Dominated by three sensational performances, Passages invites obvious comparisons to Sunday Bloody Sunday, John Schlesinger's brilliant 1971 film about the devastating effects of a ménage à trois on an otherwise conventional heterosexual marriage". Film critic Kambole Campbell of Empire wrote, "Exarchopoulos imbues her character with conflicting senses of excitement and cautiousness". That same year she acted in the French drama All Your Faces directed by Jeanne Herry. For her performance she won the César Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 2024, she voiced Ennui in the Pixar animated film Inside Out 2. David Ehrlich of IndieWire wrote, "[Ennui] is voiced by a very amusing, very French Adèle Exarchopoulos, and is so blasé about everything that she operates the console from her phone on the couch".

Personal life

During Variety's 2013 Actresses Roundtable, Exarchopoulos expressed her frustration over losing a role that went to a "brown girl". She recalled that when a casting director told her that they preferred the "brown girl" after an audition, Exarchopoulos replied, "Yeah, but it's cinema, you can make me brown".

Exarchopoulos and actor Jérémie Laheurte began dating in 2012 during the filming of Blue Is the Warmest Colour, but they ended their relationship in 2015. In 2016, she began a relationship with French rapper Mamadou Coulibaly, known as Doums, member of French hip hop collective group L'entourage, with whom she had a son, born in 2017. They separated in 2021.

In November 2020, after Blue Is the Warmest Colour director Abdellatif Kechiche was accused of sexual assault by an unnamed 29-year-old actress, Exarchopoulos spoke about her relationship with the director in an interview with French Elle magazine: "He's someone I'll love all my life. I think of him often, I hope he is happy. My meeting with him was decisive in my desire to make cinema. Certainly, Abdellatif is a complex being. But it upsets me because I really know him." In a July 2023 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Exarchopoulos said that she is still close to Kechiche. Exarchopoulos also thanked Kechiche during her speech at the 49th César Awards on 23 February 2024.

In June 2024, Exarchopoulos signed a petition addressed to French President Emmanuel Macron demanding that France officially recognize the State of Palestine.

Filmography

Film

Television

Theatre

Awards and nominations

External links

• at IMDb