Emmanuelle Beart - Gallery

Emmanuelle Béart (born August 14, 1963) is a French actress. Béart was born in Gassin, Var (not far from St. Tropez), on the French Riviera. She is the daughter of the French singer and poet Guy Béart, and actress Geneviève Galéa. In a recent trip to Croatia, she revealed that one of her grandmothers was Croatian.

As a thirteen-year-old she obtained an acting role in the 1976 film Demain les mômes. In her teens she appeared in bit parts in television then went to Montreal, Quebec, Canada to work as a nanny before returning to France the following year to attend drama school in Paris. A short time later she was cast in her first adult role in a film, and in 1986 she achieved fame with her role opposite Yves Montand, in the film Manon des Sources. For her performance, she won the 1987 César Award for "Best Supporting Actress." She also won a "Best Actress" award at the Moscow International Film Festival for her starring role in the 1995 film, Une Femme française. After a ten-year relationship with Daniel Auteuil (her co-star in Manon des Sources and Un cœur en hiver), she divorced him and re-married.

In addition to her screen work, Béart is also known for her social activism. She is an ambassador for UNICEF, and has made news for her opposition to France's anti-immigration legislation. In 1996, she made headlines when, defending the rights of the "sans-papiers" (illegal immigrants), she was forcibly removed after her group’s occupation of a Paris church.

Apparently she will also be moonlightning this Christmas (2006) as a lingerie model, having been retained for H&M for their annual campaign. This campaign provoked negative reactions amongst Swedish feminists (of the organization "Feministisk initiativ" (FI) - Feminist Initiative) who labeled the campaign 'pornofication'.