The Best of Marion Cotillard : So Far

                                                                                                                                                   photograph : Getty Images

French Academy Award winning actress Marion Cotillard celebrated her 40th birthday this week with the release of her latest movie Macbeth which had the critics all in raptures yet again  for her performance.  The Guardian Newspaper in the UK said 'Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard are a dream-team pairing' .  The Telegraph added the movie had 'a pair of cosmically powerful performances from Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard: using the word "definitive" in relation to Shakespeare is pointless, so let’s just say you wouldn’t want to follow them'

Still to come this year is another outing with Fassbinder in Justin Kurzel's 'Assassin's Creed', and to be followed  by a starring role in the latest movie from Canada's own multi-award winning enfant terrible Xavier Dolan called ' It's Only the End of the World'.  It seems however that for Miss Cotillard that its just merely the start of it. To celebrate queerguru lists the best of her performances since she became the first one to ever win an Academy Award for Best Actress in a French movie just a mere 8 years ago.

1) La Vie en Rose : 2007 Cotillard had been successfully working away in movies in France for ten years until the whole world suddenly discovered her as Édith Piaf.  Her subliminal performance blew us all away and for it she won Academy Award, BAFTA Award, César Award, and the Golden Globe Award and (another 26 Awards) for Best Actress.

2) Rust & Bone : 2012. Put in charge of his young son,  a rough edged ex-boxer Alain leaves Belgium for Antibes to live with his sister and her husband as a family. Alain's bond with Stephanie, a killer whale trainer, a sophisticated woman who seems so out of his league, grows deeper after Stephanie suffers a horrible accident. Cotillard, with the support of co-star Matthias Schoenaerts, gives a mesmerizing performance as the disfigured beautiful young woman for which she received nominations for César,  Golden Globe , BAFTA and SAG Awards for Best Actress. 

3) Two Days, One Night : 2014. In this wonderful movie written and directed by the Dardennes Brothers, Cotillard plays a young mother who  discovers that her workmates have opted for a significant pay bonus, in exchange for her dismissal. She has only one weekend to convince her colleagues to give up their bonuses so that she can keep her job.  'Time Out Magazine' called it a  'career-high performance' for Cotillard and it earned her another Academy Award Best Actress Nomination.

4) Nine : 2009 .  Even though the movie version of the hit Broadway Musical was savaged by most critics ('Perhaps "Zero" would have been a better name' wrote the L.A. Times) Cotillard still garnished raves for playing Guido Contini's wife and collected yet another Golden Globe Best Actress Nomination.

5) Little White Lies : 2010.  In this ensemble piece about a group of friends who decide to still go on vacation even though their host and best friend is in a coma in Paris which has an incredible who's who cast of the very best French actors, and directed by her husband Guillame Canet, Cotillard is still able to steal all her scenes.

6) The Immigrant : 2013.  Variety Magazine said that James Gray's poignant period drama 'boasts an arrestingly soulful performance from Marion Cotillard' as a Polish nurse-turned-prostitute for whom the symbolic promise of Ellis Island presents only hardship. Variety go on to add "Gray clearly sees something in Cotillard that no other helmer — not even her husband, Guillaume Canet — has brought out in her before. Recognizing the deep, haunted quality of Cotillard’s gaze, he features her eyes as the soul of his story, counting on their mournful quality to play to the back of the house, even as he resists unnecessary closeups in favor of broad-canvas widescreen as much as possible' 

7) Midnight in Paris : 2011 . In what is probably Woody Allen's best movie for years with its usual packed Hollywood 'A' List cast, Cotillard stands out as Adriana an aspiring fashion designer who has a history of inspiring artists, and who is the one person who unsettles Gil the American the most on his nightly walks around Paris.  As well she should.