Virginie Ledoyen began her career young, very young. "I began as a baby," she explains. "A friend of my mum was doing an advert, they needed a baby, I was there, and voilà! I loved it. It sort of replaced kindergarten." She went on to be a child model for Lacoste, and appeared in TV ads for Buitoni and Air Inter. So, it was after years of experience that , at the age of seven, she went to drama school, l'Ecole du Spectacle in Paris. She appeared in her first film, Les exploits d'un jeune Don Juan, when she was ten. Since, she has appeared in no less than 10 films, including 1995's critically acclaimed La fille suele, which will likely be the film that begins her on the road international fame. Her performance garnered her her third Most Promising Actress César (the other two were for 1994's Les marmottes and 1995's L'eau froide).
Ledoyen's latest film, Shake and Bake ("Mahjong"), directed in Taiwan by Edward Yang, premiered at 1996's Berlin Film Festival. She plays Marthe, a Parisian who travels to Taipei to find her boyfriend Markus. She falls in instead with a gang led by Red Fish, and her presence threatens to upset the stability of the group. She'll appear next in Gérard Krawczyk's Play-Back, about the rivalry between two female rock musicians.
Already, Ledoyen is being compared to the young Adjani, who, at Ledoyen's age, was in turn being compared to the legendary Jean Moreau. She shares with Adjani a critical eye for the right roles, and an innate love of acting. "For me," she has said, "being an actress is as natural as breathing."
Ledoyen admires the work of Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Bonnaire and Juliette Lewis, and is close friends with fellow French actress Marie Gillain. She smokes a pack and a half of Marlboros a day, prefers to wear no make-up and says that her favorite cure for depression is "a pot of Nutella and the TV." She likes sixties rock, particularly The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Her favorite color is black.
-Michael St Aubyn
FILMOGRAPHY
1.Play-Back (1997) .... Johanna
2.Mahjong (1996) .... Marthe
3.Ceremonie, La (1995) .... Melinda
... aka Judgement in Stone, A (1995)
4.Fille seule, La (1995) (MJE:CesarN) .... Valerie
... aka Girl Alone, A (1995)
... aka Single Girl, A (1995)
5.Sensuels, Les (1995)
6.Eau froide, L' (1994) .... Christine
... aka Cold Water (1994)
7.Marmottes, Les (1993)
... aka Groundhogs, The (1993)
8.Mima (1991)
9.Exploits d'un jeune Don Juan, Les (1987) .... Berthe
