French Actress 2007 Oscar Winner
Marion Cotillard Gives Fine Performance As French Singer Edith Piaf
Jan 27, 2008
Ms Cotillard had already won ten awards for her portrayal of French legend Edith Piaf, including a 2007 Golden Globe Best Actress in a musical or comedy. Her performance was arguably as strong as that of any other nominee this year, if for no other reason than it entailed playing a flamboyant, often lonely, individual with a mercurial disposition.
The Life of Edith Piaf (1915-1963)
Born Edith Gassion in a Paris slum, she was abandoned by her parents at an early age and raised by the prostitutes in her grandmother's bordello. She became briefly blind, and by some accounts deaf, as the result of illness. In her late teens and early twenties she performed as a street singer.
During this time, she became associated with the French underworld before being discovered by a cabaret owner who named her "La mome piaf" (the Waif Sparrow) and introduced her singing to Parisian society. After the owner's death, Raymond Asso became her mentor and taught her how to use hand and arm motions to add emotion to her singing. These techniques and her deep, haunting voice soon made her a French icon.
After World War II, Edith achieved international fame and she toured the world, although she never seemed to achieve serenity in her life. By the end of the 1950s, her always frail body began to succumb to the ravages of drug and alcohol abuse, arthritis, and liver cancer. She died in 1963.
Marion Cotillard As Edith Piaf
Marion began acting as a teenager in the early 1990s. Her early roles were not particularly notable although she did win the 2001 Verona Film Festival award for best actress in a French movie called Lisa. She also has appeared in two American films -- Tim Burton's Big Fish (2004) and A Good Year (2006) with Russell Crowe.
The role of Edith Piaf has been her most challenging. She was chosen for the part by director Olivier Dahan without having ever met him and was hired after one meeting where they did not discuss the script. They used the time to only talk about the famed chanteuse.
The first challenge was physical. At 5'-6", Cotillard is considerably bigger than the diminutive (4'-8") Piaf was. Somehow, in the movie, the actress was able to present an aura of petiteness despite the difference in size. The role also meant losing her long hair and eyebrows. Daily makeup often required three to five hours, particularly for those scenes where she plays the dying singer. Although Piaf was only 47 at the time of her death, the ravages of abuse and disease made her look thirty or more years older.
The next challege was emotional. Edith Piaf was a complex person. She was strong willed to the point of irrationality, vindictive, often angry toward both friends and foes, and self-destructive. But, she was also sensitive, passionate, tender, spiritual, and loyal to friends. It takes an actress of considerable skill not to let the bad overwhelm the good. Cotillard succeeds in this. She plays the role with such passion and heartbreak that, despite Piaf's character flaws, the viewer feels empathy toward the chanteuse and wishes that her life could have been a happier one.
As part of a recent interview in Newsweek (January 28, 2008 - p.54), Cotillard says after filming was complete she "saw Piaf everywhere." It is a reflection of just how much the actress immersed herself in the character that she was playing.
When Marion Cotillard took home the Oscar, she became only the second to win best actress for performing in a foreign language film. The first was Sophia Loren. Fittingly, Ms Cotillard is scheduled to appear with the Italian actress in Rob Marshall's Nine.
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