- Emmanuelle Béart, Manon des sources, France-Italy-Switzerland, 1985. Worthy of a great Western, the Marcel Pagnol classic had last been filmed in 1952 with his wife, Jacqueline, as the object of the lovelorn Ugolin’s obsession. In 1985, Ugolin was played by Béart’s lover, Daniel Auteuil. A fortuitous accident for producteur-realisateur Claude Berri
- Sandrine Dumas, Etats d’ame, France, 1985. A wise pass
- Sophie Marceau, Police, France, 1985. Realisateur Maurice Pialat was not happy when his discovery for A nos amours, 1983, could not – or would not – make share the lead with Gérard Depardieu. She was right; not his best film. She did a bit as a hooker and shared the lead in his next, Sous le soleil de Satan
- Anne Brochet, Masques, 1986. Impossible. When auteur Claude Chabrol called, she was shooting Sous le soleil de Satan for her discoverer, Maurice Pialat – once an actor in Cha-Cha’s Que la bête meure, 1969 (when Pialat talked the star, Jean Yanne, into making Nous de vieillirons pas ensemble – and it won him the Best Actor prize at the 1972 Cannes festival)
- Juliette Binoche, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 1988. Her English coherent enough quite not was.
- Alexandra London, Van Gogh, France, 1991. Yet again she would not rush to her mentor’s call. And he didn’t talk to her again until two years before he died in 2003
- Marie Trinitgnant, Betty, 1991. “Cha-Cha” called again – “twice!” – and again schedules didn’t mesh. Never mind. Fours years later, they made La cérémonie, with Isabelle Huppert. Absolutely parfait
- Juliette Binoche, La Veuve de Saint-Pierre, France, 1999. Director Patrice Leconte had always been looking for a second experience with Sandrine to follow Monsieur Hire, 1989. She was not free until Confidence trop intimes, 2003
- Charlotte Gainsbourg, Félix et Lola, France, 2001. Auteur Patrice Leconte wrote it for Bonnaire and one of his ’83 stars, Gérard Lanvin. Over dinner, they both agreed on what was wrong – “you wrote this for the us of 15 years ago.” “They were right,” reported Leconte. “Actors usually are. They invariably have a more lucid and pertinent vision of my projects than I do!” The public’s opinion was worse. With only 64,000 tickets bought throughout France, it was one of his biggest flops. Two years on, Bonnaire was one of Leconte’s Intimate Strangers – US title for Confidences trop intimes
- Audrey Tautou, The Da Vinci Code, 2005.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 10