Julie Gayet’s Acting Class
Actress
From very early on, Julie Gayet had a passion for theater, lyrical song, dramatic comedy and circus arts. She left for London at age 17 to study with Jack Waltzer, a member of the Actors Studio, before being discovered by Agnès Varda, who offered her her first major role in One Hundred and One Nights (1995) alongside Michel Piccoli and Marcello Mastroianni. Her career then took off with noteworthy roles in Dominique Farrugia’s Delphine 1, Ivan 0 (1996) and Laurent Bouhnik’s Select Hotel (1997), which earned her a Romy Schneider Award.
Praised for her naturalism, she enjoys changing pace and shifting registers, from comedy (Arnaud Viard’s Clara and Me (2004), Emmanuel Mouret’s Shall We Kiss? (2007) and Bertrand Tavernier’s The French Minister, which earned her a 2014 Best Supporting Actress César nomination) to experimental drama (Jean-Baptiste Léonetti’s Carré Blanc, 2011), by way of family dramas (Nicolas Vanier’s Poly, 2020), fantasies (Sébastien Bailly’s Like an Actress, 2022) and series (Call My Agent!). In 2017, Julie Gayet founded Rouge International, a production and distribution company that has backed such films as Xabi Molia’s 8 Times Up (2009), Julia Ducournau’s Raw (2016), Ziad Doueiri’s The Insult (2017), and Agnès Varda and JR’s Faces Places (2017).
She was also active in founding the Rochefort Twin Sisters Festival in 2020, promoting an intersection between the worlds of music and image by highlighting female directors, composers and artists in the cultural industries. Her commitment to women’s rights, gender parity and the struggle against sexist and sexual violence can be seen in her active participation in the Women’s Foundation, the 50/50 Collective and the PFDM Association for increasing equality and parity in the film industry.
The actress co-founded the Info-Endometriosis Association and last year published an essay entitled “We are stronger together” presenting people acting disinterestedly for the well-being of women. Last March, France Televisions broadcast her first film as a director, Olympe, a Woman of the Revolution, co-directed with Mathieu Busson, in which she played the role of Olympia, enriching her artistic career and her commitment to shining a spotlight on female figures.
