Elsa Zylberstein’s Acting Class
Actress
Elsa Zylberstein studied acting at the Cours Florent. After her first steps in 1989 in René Féret’s Baptême, she distinguished herself in 1991 with Van Gogh directed by Maurice Pialat, presented in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Hired as an extra, she finally got the part of Cathy, which earned her the Michel-Simon Prize in 1992 as well as the first of her three nominations for the Most Promising Actress César Award. She won the Romy-Schneider Prize the following year with Martine Dugowson’s Mina Tannenbaum. Elsa Zylberstein continued to demonstrate eclecticism in her choices, moving from a film directed by Chantal Akerman (Tomorrow We Move, 2003) to a comedy (Michel Leclerc’s J’invente rien, 2005), a take on a novel written by Christine Angot (Laetitia Masson’s Why (Not) Brazil?, 2004) to a blockbuster inspired by a best-seller (Guillaume Nicloux’s The Stone Council, 2006). In 2008, she starred in two films presented at the Berlin Film Festival, Jean-Marc Moutout’s The Feelings Factory and Philippe Claudel’s I’ve Loved You So Long, which won her the Best Supporting Actress César Award. In 2015, she played opposite Jean Dujardin in Claude Lelouch’s love story Un + Une. She was seen then in Christian Duguay’s historical drama A Bag of Marbles (2017), Philippe de Chauveron’s comedy With Open Arms (2017) and several other Claude Lelouch’s films, such as Everyone’s Life (2017) and Love Is Better Than Life (2021). The 2022 year is especially marked by her terrific performance in Simone, A Woman of the Century, a biopic dedicated to Simone Veil and directed by Olivier Dahan.
