Juliette Binoche is an Academy Award winning French actress who is best known for her roles in The English Patient and Chocolat.Binoche started acting in amateur stage productions before going on to the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts of Paris to study acting.Acting appeared to be in her blood, her mother was a director and actress and her father an actor and director. She followed her mother on to the stage joining a touring theatre troupe.In between her stage work she took small parts in French films, making her debut in 1983 in a film for television Dorothee danseuse de corde.Her first big screen role came later that same year when she appeared in Liberty Belle, from then on she decided to leave the stage and pursue a career in cinema.Her breakthrough role came in 1985 in Andre Techine's Rendez-vous.

Nina (Juliette Binoche) lives in Paris, having recently liberated herself from her hometown of Toulouse.

In the three short months since her arrival, she can count the number of nights spent alone on one hand.

While performing a small role in a play, Nina meets Paolo, a real estate agent. In a fit of love, Paolo takes Nina under his wing only to find that she has fallen for his cruel and insidious flatmate, Quentin.

Quentin is an actor who works in an illicit sex show. The first time he meets Nina, he attempts to rape her.

As Paola pursues Nina to no avail, Quentin and Nina develop a bizarre, cruel, and obsessive relationship. When Quentin kills himself, Nina and Paolo are brought together.

The film premiered at Cannes Film Festival where it won Best Director. Binoche was nominated for her first Best Actress Cesar award.

With following releases such as Mon beau-frère a tué ma soeur, Mauvais Sang she cemented herself as a good french actress.

Her first English speaking role came in The Unbearable Lightness of Being alongside British actor Daniel Day Lewis in 1988.

The film follows the story of Thomas (Daniel Day Lewis), a womanising Czech doctor in 1968 Prague, prior to the Soviet invasion, whose sexual appetite is never fully satisfied.

Thomas believes in keeping sexual gratification separate from love and finds true understanding and erotic bliss with Sabina (Lena Olin), a seductive and elusive artist.

However, Thomas's understanding of love and commitment is challenged when he meets Tereza (Juliette Binoche), a sexually naive and innocent young woman who captures Thomas's fancy on an out-of-town business trip.

When Tereza appears on his Prague doorstep, Thomas lets down his guard and allows the young woman to stay with him, breaking all his rules regarding the dangers of seductive entanglement.

Despite his numerous affairs, Thomas falls deeply in love with Tereza, and they eventually marry. Sabina accepts Thomas's marriage to Tereza, but Tereza cannot accept Thomas's many lovers and is deeply hurt by her sly husband.

Tereza's own sexual awakening and creative spirit is at the core of the film, as she is undeniably captivating to both Thomas and Sabina, who becomes her friend and artistic mentor.

The three become involved in an intense love triangle that is eventually shattered by the violent Soviet invasion of 1968.

The film catapulted Binoche onto the international stage as the film enjoyed worldwide critical and commercial success.

In the early nineties Binoche backed up her performance in The Unbearable Lightness of Being by starring in an adaptation of Wuthering Heights before returning to France to star in the critically acclaimed Three Colours: Blue.

But it was her performance in Anthony Minghella's 1996 love/war movie The English Patient that backed up her performance in The Unbearable Lightness on the international stage.

The film revolves around the scarred, amnesiac mapmaker (Ralph Fiennes) who is found by Bedouins in the desert and then transported to Italy.

When Allied nurse Hana (Juliette Binoche) devotes herself to caring for the mysterious patient in an abandoned monastery, his story of a intense love affair with a colleague's wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) begins to unfold in a series of flashbacks.

Hana, meanwhile, faces her own demons and explores her attraction to a Sikh bomb expert (Naveen Andrews).

Tensions escalate at the monastery following the appearance of Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), a thumbless thief who knows the identity of the mysterious patient.

The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards winning Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Binoche.

Since then the actress has moved between working on French movies to international films like Chocolat and Breaking and Entering.

The Flight of the red Balloon is the actress' next film. Suzanne is a mother overwhelmed by her obligations.

With the classes she teaches, her puppet shows and her two children, Simon and Louise, she has been raising alone, she does not have a moment to breathe.

To alleviate the situation, she takes in a young Taiwanese babysitter, Song Fang, who is a student at Paris University.

Comment on this Article On his way home from school, Simon, who is 7 years old, tours her through the neighbourhood.

Soon, Song Fang and Simon share an imaginary world: a strange red balloon begins to follow them everywhere.

While Suzanne is caught up in a court case involving her tenant downstairs, who refuses to leave, every day, Son Fang becomes more important in her life.

The Flight of the red Balloon is released 14th March

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

View the Juliette Binoche movies gallery.

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