Valérie Donzelli

A tall, slim brunette with deep red puckered lips, Valérie Donzelli plays wonderfully clumsy, gawky, goofy girls, failed seductresses and successful charm freaks. She is also a noted film director, whose works explore very different registers, which she does not hesitate to mix whether comic, offbeat, sentimental, tragic, sometimes with little concern for the Cartesian spirit. The granddaughter of painter-sculptor Dante Donzelli, Valérie was born in 1973 in Épinal, a town in the North-East of France. At 18 she went to Paris to study studied architecture, but after a while decided instead to become an actress, which was encouraged by a young performer she met, Jérémie Elkaïm, who later became her companion.. She soon landed a title role, that of a neurotic young mother in Sandrine Veysset's « Martha... Martha » (2001). The next parts in movies were only supporting roles (« Who Killed Bambi? », « The Best Day of My Life », « In His Hands ») but she was treated better by television, fo