Eva Gaëlle Green (born July 6, 1980 in Paris) is a French actress and model of Sephardic Jewish, Breton and Swedish descent.
She has a slight reputation for being interested in small, arthouse productions and Femme Fatale roles, and does tend to take her kit off in those as well. She gained mainstream recognition as Vesper Lynd, the Love Interest of Daniel Craig's James Bond in Casino Royale.
She is the daughter of actress Marlène Jobert and dentist surgeon Walter Green, and she has a dizygotic twin sister named Joy, who became a horse breeder in Italy. Green is also related to composer Paul Le Flem on her father's side.
Filmography:
- The Dreamers (2003) as Isabella
- Arsène Lupin (2004) as Clarisse de Dreux-Soubise
- Kingdom of Heaven (2005) as Queen Sybilla of Jerusalem
- Cracks (2006) as Miss G
- Casino Royale (2006) as Vesper Lynd
- The Golden Compass (2007) as Serafina Pekkala
- Franklyn (2008) as Emilia Bryant / Sally
- Womb (2010) as Rebecca
- Camelot (2011) as Morgaine
- Perfect Sense (2011) as Susan
- Dark Shadows (2012) as Angelique Bouchard
- White Bird in a Blizzard (2014) as Eve Connors
- Penny Dreadful (2014-2016) as Vanessa Ives
- 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) as Artemisia
- The Salvation (2014) as Madelaine
- Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) as Ava Lord
- Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016) as Miss Peregrine
- Based on a True Story (2017) as Elle
- Euphoria (2017) as Emilie
- Dumbo (2019) as Colette Marchant
- Proxima (2019) as Sarah Loreau
- The Luminaries (2020) as Lydia Wells
- Nocebo (2022)
- The Three Musketeers (2023) as Milady de Winter
- Liaison (TBA, Apple TV+ series)
Tropes & Trivia related to her works:
- Action Girl: In 300: Rise of an Empire she portrays Artemisia, an asskicking queen allied with Persian Emperor Xerxes. Borderline in Camelot as she's more of a Lady of Black Magic.
- Adaptation Dye-Job:
- Serafina Pekkala is blonde in the books but Green plays her as a brunette in The Golden Compass.
- The same about the blonde Milady de Winter from The Three Musketeers. Eva didn't dye her hair for the 2023 films.
- Author Appeal:
- She is quite fond of witches, witchcraft, and the occult, hence her reflective roles in The Golden Compass, Camelot, Dark Shadows and Penny Dreadful.
- As mentioned above, roles that are sexy in nature and/or require her to get naked tend to attract her. Green, who describes herself as a bit of a Shrinking Violet in real life, has speculated this might be a subconscious effort to get over her insecurities.
- Awesome, Dear Boy: She played Serafina Pekkala in The Golden Compass because she loves witches and the occult, and wanted to play one. She then went on to play another in Dark Shadows.
- Chronically Killed Actor: Even lampshaded by her in this interview
."I die a lot in movies and I don't know why. It's a big rehearsal for me, yeah." - Defrosting Ice Queen: With films like Casino Royale (2006) and Kingdom of Heaven, this is one of her familiar character roles.
- Dye Hard: Green is naturally blonde but has been dyeing her hair brown since she was a teenager.
- Fake Brit: As her French accent has become less thick over the years, she is able to pass herself off as English characters. She either plays Brits or characters employing The Queen's Latin.
- Femme Fatale: This started off as her character type, which she was not too pleased about.
- Funny Character, Boring Actor: She has a tendency to play kooky, extravagantly insane, or charismatic Deadpan Snarker characters. Green describes herself as a reclusive Shrinking Violet, and often comes across as very aloof.
- Head-Turning Beauty: She was chosen to play a Bond Girl. She gets a scene where she's supposed to walk up to the poker table, distracting the rest of the players. Of course, she screws with Bond, entering from the other side (in front of his line of sight), so he's Distracted by the Sexy too.
- Hot Witch: She first was Serafina Pekkala in The Golden Compass where her character was previously involved with a human. The character's beauty is mentioned more than once in the books. Later examples include Morgan Pendragon in Camelot, where she has at least two love interests and her beauty is frequently commented on; and Angélique Bouchard in Dark Shadows.
- Ms. Fanservice: Since her film debut The Dreamers, where her body was shown in all its glory, she has made a career of portraying sexy female characters and showing a lot of skin, whether nude or not.
- Never Accepted in His Hometown: A very mild version. Compared to most French actors, her international roles are much more diverse and flourishing than her career in France. Her work is still widely appreciated by French people though.
- Playing Against Type:
- Playing with Character Type: Morgan Pendragon in Camelot is within type for her - supernatural ambitious Ice Queen. But it's one of Green's few real outwardly evil roles - as Morgan murders innocent people, kidnaps her stepmother, and eventually rapes her brother.
- Promoted Fanboy: She's a big Tim Burton fan, and got to work with him in Dark Shadows, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and Dumbo. She also worked with Johnny Depp in the former, and she's a fan of him too.
- Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Numerous roles, such as Vesper Lynd, Ava Lord, Artemisia, and Vanessa Ives.
- Real-Life Relative: Her mother Marlène Jobert provided narration in audiobook adaptations of her own books for children, and Eva did voices in some of them.
- Sherlock Scan: Seems to be a recurring staple in many of the characters she plays, notable examples in which this is performed include as Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale (2006), as Miss Peregrine in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, and as Vanessa Ives on Penny Dreadful.
- Star-Making Role: Casino Royale put her on the mainstream map.
- Typecasting: Green tends to play dark, vicious, and troubled characters, often with a supernatural element to them. Earlier on in her career, she was playing Femme Fatales, something she was not happy about. However, she later revealed she found playing evil roles cathartic and enjoyed darker roles, even wanting to play a serial killer.
- The Vamp: Very often. One example is in Dark Shadows opposite Johnny Depp, who plays an actual vampire. Another is in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, where she plays Ava Lord, one of the purest examples of this trope. She's also set to play Milady de Winter, one of the most famous vamps in French literature, in the 2023 film adaptation of The Three Musketeers.
- Vocal Evolution: As noted in this interview from 2003, she began with a very thick French accent. Then compare this from when she was promoting The Golden Compass where her accent has faded and sounds more British. In Kingdom of Heaven she's very in-between - where her voice just sounds ambiguously exotic.
- What Could Have Been:
- Closer was meant to be her mainstream breakout film debut, but she dropped out and was replaced with Natalie Portman.
- She was offered the role of Madeleine Linscott in The Black Dahlia. Not wanting to be typecast as a Femme Fatale, she turned it down, and it went to Hilary Swank.
- Tessa Quayle in The Constant Gardener was her role but she dropped out. Rachel Weisz won an Oscar for it.
- Three roles she dropped out of have been given to German actor Diane Kruger - The Host (2013), Mr. Nobody and Farewell, My Queen.
- She turned down the role of Doctor Poison in Wonder Woman and was replaced by Spanish actress Elena Anaya.
- Was approached to play the female lead in Lars von Trier's Antichrist, but her agent rejected the project.
