Anne Parillaud Biography
Born: May 06, 1960
French beauty Anne Parillaud paid her dues in teen pictures and B-dramas before earning international acclaim as Luc_Besson's unforgettable Nikita (La_Femme_Nikita) (1990). Raised in Paris, Parillaud made her film debut as "the girl with the kitten" in Un Amour de Sable (1977). Still in high school, she hoped to pursue a law career until a more substantial role in Michel_Lang's teen comedy L'Hôtel de la Plage (The_Beach_Hotel) (1978) (which she filmed during summer break) made her love acting. Parillaud earned a reputation for playing promiscuous teens in Écoute_Voir (Look_See) (1978), Girls (1980), and Patrizia (Patricia) (1980). She went on to star in two thrillers for her then-boyfriend Alain_Delon, Pour La Peau d'un Flic (For a Cop's Hide) (1981), and Le_Battant (The_Cache) (1983). In 1985, while taking a break from acting to reinvent her image, Parillaud met director Luc_Besson at a Paris film festival. They moved in together and had a daughter in 1987. In the meantime, Besson wrote Nikita, the story of a drug-addicted murderess who is transformed into a political assassin by a secret government agency. To prepare for the violent crime drama, the actress slept in the Paris metro, took judo lessons, and learned how to fire a handgun. She earned a César for her performance in the film, which was France's second highest grossing picture of 1990 and spawned both an American remake and a television series. Parillaud and Besson ended their five-year romance shortly after Nikita's release, and the actress left France to make her U.S. debut in John_Landis' failed vampire comedy Innocent_Blood (1982). She then starred in the equally disastrous Map of the Human Heart (1992), before returning to Europe to play Béatrice_Dalle's sister in the unremarkable À la Folie (Six_Days,_Six_Nights) (1994). Parillaud gave stand-out performances as an oppressed mother in Frankie_Starlight (1995) and as a rich seductress in Passage à L'Acte (1996), but was still unable to match the success she had as Nikita. She did not fare any better opposite Gabriel_Byrne and Leonardo_Di_Caprio in the flop The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) or with William_Baldwin and Graham_Greene in Shattered_Image (1998). Yet, the indomitable and talented Parillaud continued to work steadily into the new millennium, appearing in Claude_Lelouch's romantic comedy Une_Pour_Toutes (One_4_All) (2000), Olivier_Marchal's action flick Gangsters (2002), and Catherine_Breillat's farce Sex_Is_Comedy (2002). Aubry Anne D'Arminio, Rovi
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