French after all: the Hollywood career of Marion Cotillard

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article attempts to shed light on the aspects of the persona which enabled Marion Cotillard to have a long-lasting career in Hollywood where so many other French stars have failed, by analysing her most important roles, as well as her image in the English-speaking press. Even if her Americanisation distinguished her from her fellow countrywomen like Audrey Tautou or Juliette Binoche, Cotillard nonetheless never lost her Frenchness, which played just as important a role in her Hollywood success. By comparing Cotillard to other female French stars such as Simone Signoret, Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche or Audrey Tautou, I show how she followed a tradition of representations of French women that enabled her to distinguish herself from other Hollywood stars who do not possess this ‘exoticness’, but also how she differentiated herself from her compatriots popular in the US. I also underline the complexity of her persona, which prevented being trapped in a monolithic and fixed national stereotype, and enabled her to embody an eminently singular variation on this stereotype, perfectly adapted to the American ideological context of the 2010s.