Charlotte Gainsbourg

Charlotte Lucy Gainsbourg is a French and British actress and singer born on July 21, 1971, in London, England. She is the daughter of English actress and singer Jane Birkin and French musician Serge Gainsbourg. Raised in Paris alongside her maternal half-sister Kate Barry, Gainsbourg grew up in a prominent creative family that included her grandmother, actress Judy Campbell, and her uncle, screenwriter Andrew Birkin. She attended school in Paris and Switzerland, becoming fluent in both French and English.

Gainsbourg began her career in the entertainment industry as a teenager, encouragingly introduced to screen acting by her mother. She made her feature film debut in 1984's Paroles et Musique. That same year, she made her musical debut alongside her father on the single "Lemon Incest." In 1986, she earned the César Award for Most Promising Actress for her role in An Impudent Girl and released her debut studio album, Charlotte for Ever, which was produced by her father and shared a title with a feature film in which they both starred.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Gainsbourg expanded her international film resume. She made her English-language acting debut in 1993 in The Cement Garden, directed by her uncle, and took the stage in a 1994 production of David Mamet's Oleanna. She starred as the title character in the 1996 film adaptation of Jane Eyre and secured a second César Award, for Best Supporting Actress, for her role in the 2000 film La Bûche. Her subsequent film credits included American and international productions such as 21 Grams, The Science of Sleep, and I'm Not There.

In 2009, Gainsbourg received the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival for her performance in Lars von Trier's Antichrist. She continued collaborating with the director on his later films Melancholia and Nymphomaniac. Her additional screen projects include The Tree, Samba, Independence Day: Resurgence, The Snowman, and a guest appearance playing herself in the series Call My Agent!. In addition to acting, she served as a jury member at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival in 2012.

Following a twenty-year hiatus from recording music after her initial release, Gainsbourg returned to her singing career with the critically and commercially successful 2006 album 5:55. Her third album, IRM (2009), was produced by Beck and inspired by her experiences undergoing brain scans after a 2007 cerebral hemorrhage. She later released the compilation Stage Whisper in 2011 and her fourth studio album, Rest, in 2017. Rest addressed her grief following the deaths of her father and half-sister, and its music videos marked her directorial debut.

In her personal life, Gainsbourg has been in a long-term partnership with actor and director Yvan Attal since 1991, and they have three children. After spending most of her life in Paris, she relocated with her family to New York City in 2013 before returning to Paris in 2020. Dedicated to preserving her father's artistic heritage, she maintained his former home, which officially opened to the public as the Maison Gainsbourg museum in 2023.