| Birth Date: | 21 December 1969 |
| Birth Place: | Paris, France |
| Years Active: | 1976–present |
| Partner: | Marc Streitenfeld (2007–2012) |
| Children: | 1 |
| Alma Mater: | New York University |
Julie Delpy (in 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), (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.[1]
Delpy was born in Paris, the only child of Albert Delpy, a Vietnamese-born French actor and theater director, and Marie Pillet, a French actress in feature films and the avant-garde theater. Her mother was also known for signing the 1971 Manifesto of the 343, signed by women demanding reproductive rights and admitting to having abortions when they were illegal in France. In Delpy's 2007 film 2 Days in Paris, her character's mother was played by her real mother and acknowledges signing the manifesto, mirroring her real life. Pillet died in 2009.
Julie's parents exposed her to the arts at an early age. She said:
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 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 , 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.[2] [3] 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).[4] It received glowing reviews and was considered one of the most significant films of the '90s independent film movement.[5] Its success led to Delpy's casting in the 1997 American film An American Werewolf in Paris.[6]
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.
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."[7] 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.[8] 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.[9] Responding to criticism of the film's nudity, Delpy said in interview with GQ Magazine:
Some people were like, 'It's not feminist. You're showing your tits and he's not showing his ass.' [But] isn't it the people who are hiding women behind layers of clothes who are the misogynists? I'm a real person, so it's a statement to say, 'Alright, I'm a forty year-old woman, and this is what you get with no plastic surgery.'[10]
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.[11] 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.[12] It has also failed to enter production as of 2020.
Delpy courted controversy in 2016 when the Oscar nominations included no Black honorees. "Two years ago, I said something about the Academy being very white male, which is the reality, and I was slashed to pieces by the media ... It's funny—women can't talk. I sometimes wish I were African-American because people don't bash them afterward."[13] She later apologized for the comment.[14]
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.
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.[15] Their son was born in January 2009.[16]
In 2015 she married Dimitris Birbilis.[17]
Delpy has expressed her commitment to correcting inaccurate assumptions regarding feminism, telling IndieWire "I'm very dedicated to feminism [but] even if I'm a feminist, I don't think all women are perfect. If we're equal to men, we are also imperfect like men ... [Some men] try to say [feminists] think that women are better than men, and I want to tell them, 'no'."[18] In a 2007 interview with Jan Lisa Huttner, she said, "I was raised by a feminist, so I'm not a feminist. I don't need to be. I’m equal to men. I have no issues with the idea that I'm the same as a man. I have my differences; I have breasts, and different plumbing, different stuff down there. But outside of this, my consciousness, my capacity at creating, my capacity at doing things is the same as a man."[19] However, in a 2012 interview with Emily Greenhouse in The New Yorker, she said, "You know, I've been raised by feminists, and I'm such a feminist, there's no way I'm not going to be feminist, because my core is so deeply feminist that I can even make sexist comments about women, and I feel still a feminist."[20]
Delpy has said she has been plagued by health problems since childhood and had to wear callipers at age eight. She also occasionally experiences migraines and panic attacks.
In 2022, Delpy was an honoree by the Carnegie Corporation of New York's Great Immigrant Award.[21] [22]
| Year | Title | Role | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | Guerres civiles en France | Credited as Julie Pillet Segment La semaine sanglante | ||
| 1982 | Niveau moins trois | Short film | ||
| 1985 | Classique | Short film | ||
| 1985 | Détective | Wise young girl | ||
| 1985 | L'Amour ou presque | Melie | ||
| 1986 | Mauvais Sang | Lise | English: Bad Blood Nominated—César Award for Most Promising Actress | |
| 1987 | Beatrice | Beatrice de Cortemart | French: La Passion Béatrice Nominated—César Award for Most Promising Actress | |
| 1987 | King Lear | Virginia (uncredited) | ||
| 1988 | L'autre nuit | Marie | ||
| 1989 | La noche oscura | Virgin Mary | English: The Dark Night | |
| 1989 | Trouble | Short film | ||
| 1990 | Europa Europa | Leni | ||
| 1991 | Les dents de ma mère | Julie | Short film | |
| 1991 | Voyager | Sabeth | Nominated—European Film Award for Best Actress | |
| 1992 | Warsaw - Year 5703 | Fryda | ||
| 1993 | The Three Musketeers | Constance | ||
| 1993 | Younger and Younger | Melodie | ||
| 1993 | Killing Zoe | Zoe | ||
| 1993 | Dominique (cameo appearance) | |||
| 1994 | Dominique | |||
| 1994 | Dominique (cameo appearance) | |||
| 1995 | Blah Blah Blah | Short film | Also as writer, director, and producer | |
| 1995 | Before Sunrise | Céline | Nominated—MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss | |
| 1996 | Tykho Moon | Lena | ||
| 1997 | Les mille merveilles de l'univers | Eva Purpur | English: The Thousand Wonders of the Universe | |
| 1997 | An American Werewolf in Paris | Serafine Pigot | ||
| 1997 | Alleys and Motorways | Video | ||
| 1998 | The Treat | Francesca | ||
| 1998 | L.A. Without a Map | Julie | ||
| 1998 | Crime and Punishment | Sonia | Television film | |
| 1999 | True Love | Television film | ||
| 1999 | The Passion of Ayn Rand | Barbara Branden | Television film | |
| 1999 | But I'm a Cheerleader | Lipstick Lesbian | ||
| 2000 | Sand | Lill | ||
| 2001 | Investigating Sex | Chloe | Also known as Intimate Affairs | |
| 2001 | MacArthur Park | Wendy | ||
| 2001 | Waking Life | Céline | ||
| 2001 | Beginner's Luck | Anya | ||
| 2001 | ER | Nicole | Television program, 7 episodes | |
| 2002 | Villa des roses | Louise Creteur | ||
| 2002 | Looking for Jimmy | Al | Also as writer, director, and producer | |
| 2002 | CinéMagique | Marguerite | Disney Theme Park Attraction | |
| 2003 | Notting Hill Anxiety Festival | Charlotte | ||
| 2004 | Before Sunset | Céline | Also as writer and composer Empire Award for Best Actress San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Nominated—National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress Nominated—Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Nominated—Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress | |
| 2004 | Frankenstein | Caroline Frankenstein | Miniseries | |
| 2005 | Broken Flowers | Sherry | ||
| 2006 | The Legend of Lucy Keyes | Jeanne Cooley | ||
| 2006 | The Hoax | Nina van Pallandt | ||
| 2006 | Guilty Hearts | Charlotte | ||
| 2007 | The Air I Breathe | Gina | ||
| 2007 | 2 Days in Paris | Marion | Also as writer, director, and producer | |
| 2009 | The Countess | Erzsébet Báthory | Also as writer, director, and producer | |
| 2011 | Skylab | Anna | Also as writer and director | |
| 2012 | 2 Days in New York | Marion | Also as writer and director | |
| 2013 | Before Midnight | Céline | Nominated—Detroit Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Nominated—Dublin Film Critics' Circle Award for Best Actress Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical Nominated—Guardian Film Award for Best Actor Nominated—Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead Nominated—National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress (Runner-Up) Nominated—Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Nominated—Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress | |
| 2015 | Madame B. | |||
| 2015 | Lolo | Violette | Also as writer and director | |
| 2016 | Wiener-Dog | Dina | ||
| 2017 | The Bachelors | Carine | ||
| 2019 | My Zoe | Isabelle | Also director and writer | |
| 2021 | On the Verge[23] | Justine | 12 episodes; also creator, executive producer, writer, and director | |
| 2023 | The Lesson | Hélène Sinclair | ||
| 2024 | Meet the Barbarians | Joëlle | Also a writer and director |
| Year | Award | Category | Nominated work | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| César Award | Mauvais sang | |||
| La Passion Béatrice | ||||
| European Film Award | The Voyager | |||
| MTV Movie Award | Before Sunrise | |||
| San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award | Before Sunset | |||
| Academy Award | ||||
| Writers Guild of America Award | ||||
| Empire Award | ||||
| Independent Spirit Award | ||||
| Online Film Critics Society Award | ||||
| 2007 | Mons International Festival of Love Films Award | Coup de Coeur | 2 Days in Paris | |
| César Award | ||||
| Golden Globe | Before Midnight | |||
| Academy Award | ||||