Julie Delpy facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Julie Delpy
Delpy at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	(1969-12-21) 21 December 1969 (age 55) Paris, France
Nationality	French American
Alma mater	New York University
Occupation	Actress screenwriter film director
Years active	1976–present
Spouse(s)	Dimitris Birbilis ​ (m. 2015)​
Partner(s)	Marc Streitenfeld (2007–2012)
Children	1
Parent(s)	Albert Delpy (father)

Julie Delpy (French: [ʒyli dɛlpi]; born 21 December 1969) is a French and American actress, screenwriter, and film-director. She studied filmmaking at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and has directed, written, and acted in more than 30 films, including Europa Europa (1990), Voyager (1991), Three Colours: White (1993), the Before trilogy (1995, 2004, 2013), An American Werewolf in Paris (1997), and 2 Days in Paris (2007).

She has been nominated for three César Awards, two Online Film Critics Society Awards, and two Academy Awards. She moved to the United States in 1990 and became a US citizen in 2001.

Family

Delpy was born in Paris, the only child of Albert Delpy, a French actor born in Vietnam and theater director, and Marie Pillet, a French actress in feature films and the avant-garde theater.

Julie's parents exposed her to the arts at an early age. She said:

I couldn't hope for better parents. They really raised me with a love of art, bringing me to museums and seeing things that a child wouldn't see at that age. I would see Ingmar Bergman movies when I was 9 and totally go for it. And they would bring me to see Francis Bacon's paintings, which I loved: so dark and at the same time it's so wonderful.

Film career

In 1984, at fourteen, Delpy was discovered by film director Jean-Luc Godard, who cast her in Détective (1985). Two years later she played the title role in Bertrand Tavernier's La Passion Béatrice (1987) and was nominated for a César Award for Most Promising Actress. She used her money from the film to pay for her first trip to New York City.

Delpy in 1991

Delpy became an international celebrity after starring in the 1990 film Europa Europa directed by Agnieszka Holland. In the film, she plays a young pro-Nazi who falls in love with the hero, Solomon Perel, not knowing he is Jewish. She did not speak German, so she performed her role in English and her dialogue was dubbed in.

Delpy subsequently appeared in several Hollywood and European films, including Voyager (1991) and The Three Musketeers (1993). In 1993, she was cast by director Krzysztof Kieślowski for the female lead in Three Colours: White, the second film in Kieślowski's Three Colours trilogy. She also appeared briefly in the other two films - Blue and Red - in the same role. That year, she also appeared with Brendan Fraser and Donald Sutherland in the Percy Adlon feature Younger and Younger. In 1994, she starred with Eric Stoltz in Roger Avary's directorial debut Killing Zoe, a cult heist film capturing the Generation X zeitgeist. She achieved wider recognition for her role opposite Ethan Hawke in director Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise (1995). It received glowing reviews and was considered one of the most significant films of the '90s independent film movement. Its success led to Delpy's casting in the 1997 American film An American Werewolf in Paris.

She reprised her Before Sunrise character, Céline, with a brief animated appearance in Waking Life (2001), and again in the sequels Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013). The initial follow-up movie earned Delpy, who co-wrote the script, her first Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

In late 2001, she appeared alongside comedian Martin Short in the 30-minute short film CinéMagique, a theatre-show attraction presented several times daily at Walt Disney Studios Park in Disneyland Paris. She attended the park's March 2002 opening and the inauguration of the film-based attraction, where she starred as Marguerite - a female actress with whom Short's character, George, falls in love as he stumbles through countless classic movies. CinéMagique won the 2002 Themed Entertainment Association award for Outstanding Themed Attraction.

In 2009, Delpy starred in The Countess as the title character Elizabeth Báthory. Her third film as a director, it also starred Daniel Brühl and William Hurt.

Writing and directing

Delpy began being interested in a film-directing career when still a child, and enrolled in a summer directing course at New York University. She wrote and directed the short film Blah Blah Blah in 1995 which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2004, she co-wrote Before Sunset, a sequel to the 1995 movie Before Sunrise, with director Richard Linklater and co-star Ethan Hawke. Describing the experience, she said, "I'm not a feminist wearing overalls and hating the male gender. But I'm a definite feminist. I don't want to make Before Sunset into a little male fantasy, ever." She received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for her work on the film.

She made her feature length directorial debut in 2002 with Looking for Jimmy, which she also wrote and produced. In 2007 she directed, wrote, edited, and co-produced the original score for 2 Days in Paris, co-starring Adam Goldberg. It also features Delpy's real-life parents, Marie Pillet and Albert Delpy, as her character's parents.

Delpy with frequent co-star Ethan Hawke in 2013

In 2011 she wrote and directed Le Skylab, which received a theatrical release in France but failed to find distribution in the U.S. In 2012 she released 2 Days in New York, a sequel to her 2007 film 2 Days in Paris, starring Delpy and actor Chris Rock in a role she said she wrote specifically for him. In 2013, she reunited with Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke to write Before Midnight, the sequel to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. She again starred with Hawke, and the film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. It screened out of competition at the Berlin International Film Festival and was released in May 2013. Delpy, Linklater and Hawke were later nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards.

Lolo was Delpy's second French-language feature film, and the first she'd directed since 2 Days in New York. She was also slated to write and direct the HBO movie Cancer Vixen, starring Cate Blanchett as Marisa Acocella Marchetto, a cartoonist for The New Yorker who is diagnosed with cancer. The project has yet to materialize as of 2020. In early 2014, Delpy announced her next writing-directing project would be A Dazzling Display of Splendor and focus on a family of vaudeville performers. It has also failed to enter production as of 2020.

Music

Delpy is also a musical artist. Three tracks from her 2003 album Julie Delpy - "A Waltz for a Night", "An Ocean apart", and "Je t'aime tant" - were featured in Before Sunset. She composed the original score for 2 Days in Paris in which she performed Marc Collin's "Lalala" over the closing credits. She also wrote the music for her 2009 film The Countess.

Personal life

Delpy moved to New York in 1990, then to Los Angeles a few years later. She has been a naturalized US citizen since 2001 although she also retains her French citizenship. She divides her time between Paris and Los Angeles. From 2007 to 2012 she was in a relationship with German film composer Marc Streitenfeld. Their son was born in January 2009.

In 2015 she married Dimitris Birbilis.

In 2022, Delpy was an honoree by the Carnegie Corporation of New York's Great Immigrant Award.

Selected filmography

Delpy at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival

As actress

As filmmaker

Awards and nominations

See also

In Spanish: Julie Delpy para niños