Marie-Christine Barrault

A luminous, versatile blonde performer, Marie-Christine Barrault made an impressive film debut as the student who entices and marries the moralistic Jean-Louis Trintignant in Eric Rohmer's "Ma nuit chez Maud"/"My Night at Maud's" (1969). She earned a surprise Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance as one of the lovers in the sleeper hit comedy "Cousin, Cousine" (1975). Rohmer tapped her again to play Guinevere in "Perceval le gallois/Perceval" (1978). Barrault was virtually wasted in her English-language debut in "The Medusa Touch" (1978) and played an object of Woody Allen's affections in his "Stardust Memories" (1980). She made one other American film, "Table for Five" (1983), as Jon Voight's leading lady before she returned to European fare, where she worked with many leading directors. Andrzej Wajda cast her in "Eine Liebe in Deutschland/A Love in Germany" (1983) while Volker Schlondorff tapped her for his Proust adaptation, "Un Amour de Swann/Swann in Love" (1984). She has remained active, generally in supporting roles, in such films as "Amour Fou" (1993), directed by her husband Roger Vadim, "C'est la tangente que je prefere/Love, Math and Sex" and "Obsession" (both 1997).