Born August 12, 1965 in St. Tropez, Emmanuelle Beart is the offspring of a Russian-Spanish father, singer-songwriter Guy Béart, and an Italian-Greek mother, Geneviève Galea. The couple divorced when Emmanuelle was a child.
Beart appeared in her first film, La course du lievre a travers les champs, at age seven. When a teenager, during a stay in Montreal, the American director Robert Altman spotted her in the street, and offered her a role. The film was never made, but, at the age of 18, she left drama school in Paris when she was cast in Premiers désirs. Her first great success came three years later, with the title role of Claude Berri's Manon des sources, for which she won a César for Best Supporting Actress.
Beart is reknowned for her meticulous preparation for her films. For 1992's Un coeur en hiver, she practised the violin for three hours a day for 18 months. In 1996's Mission: Impossible, only her second English-language role, she lamented that she missed this deep commitment to character. "The filming was so much ighter and more playful," she said. "I'm used to doing cinema with people who ask themselves deep, metaphysical questions. I asked a question about my character on Mission: Impossible, and the answer was, 'Can you hold a gun?' I never asked another question."
In fact, learning English proved to be the most difficult part of her preparation. "I basically went crazy for six months with an English coach," she explains. "The challenge was not so much to be able to speak English as to be quick in English. In the beginning, it would take so long to express an idea that by he time I got it out, everybody had left for the day."
Beart says that, after the experience, she is left with little desire to make American movies, "It's definitely not my goal, and the main reason is that I cannot work the same way that I do in France... I've been very spoiled for a long time now in France, so I'm just going to do little French movies and, maybe, I'm going to appreciate a little bit more of what I have here."
Her most recent work, a short film for the French TV channel Canal+, Le dernier chaperon rouge, premiered on October 4th, 1996. Directed by Jan Kounen, the film is a musical adaption of the "Little Red Riding Hood" tale, with Beart in the title role. Her next film will be Jacques Weber's Don Juan.. She is als to give her second theatrical performance ever in Strindberg play to be directed by Luc Bondy.
Beart had a long relationship with actor Daniel Auteuil, her co-star in several films. She has a daughter, Nelly (born in 1992), by Auteuil, and a young son Johan (born in 1996) by her current boyfriend David Moreau. She says her children do not interfere with her acting career: "For the moment, I just put them in a backpack and bring them along with me. I love the fact that they can travel with me. I just decided that I would not put my professional life on hold to raise children. I know that sounds selfish to a lot of people and I don't know if what I'm doing is the right thing. But that's the way I'm doing it."
Like many of her peers, Beart gets fed up with the press' incessant curiousity about her private life. "It's madness," she complains. "They follow me. I sue them. That's the deal. I have to admit that it's getting painful to stay polite...I give everything I have to give on the screen. I feel I don't owe the public anything else."
Although intensely private, Beart is not averse to giving her time in the political realm. On June 19th, 1996 Beart travelled to the desert regions of Mauritania as a special ambassador of UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund. "When UNICEF asked me to support their work, I immediately accepted. I have been deeply concerned about the welfare of these children."
In August, 1996 she joined a protest at a Paris church where 300 African immigrants, the so-called "sans-papiers de Saint-Bernard," were resisting deportation by the right-wing government. When riot police stormed the church, the issue provoked demonstrations throughout the country.
-Michael St Aubyn
Contact Information
France: VMA, 10 avenue George-V, 75008 Paris.
USA: William Morris Agency, 151 El Camino Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90212.
