Marie Trintignant (January 21, 1962 - August 1, 2003) was a French actress.
The daughter of actor Jean-Louis Trintignant and filmmaker Lucienne Marquand (known as "Nadine Trintignant"), she started her film career at age 5 in 1967. Her career got a significant boost in 1988 with Claude Chabrol's Story of Women, and she ended up being nominated multiple times at the Césars awards the following years.
During the summer of 2003, she was filming a biopic miniseries about writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (of Gigi fame) in Vilnius, Lithuania, and she had a tumultuous affair with Bertrand Cantat, the lead singer of the French rock band Noir Désir, at the same time (she was married to filmmaker Samuel Benchetrit since 1998). She died from cranial wounds after being repeatedly punched in the head by Cantat, who was then convicted of "murder with indirect intent", in what remains perhaps the most infamous case of domestic violence in the history of French show business. She was 41.
Her works include:
- Série noire (1979) as Mona
- La terrazza (1980) as Isabella
- Story of Women (1988) as Lulu/Lucie
- Les Jupons de la Révolution : Marat (1989) as Charlotte Corday
- Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991) as the voice
- Betty (1992) as Betty Etamble
- The Angel's Instinct (1993) as the young widow
- The Misanthrope (1994 TV film) as Célimène
- Jesus' Demons (1997) as Levrette
- The Prince of the Pacific (2000) as Marie-Louise/Moeata
- Corto Maltese, la cour secrète des arcanes (2002) as Duchess Marina Seminova (voice)
- Janis & John (2003) as Brigitte Sterni / hallucinations of Janis Joplin
- Colette, une femme libre (2004) as Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
Tropes & Trivia about her works:
- Died During Production: The filming of Colette, une femme libre was about 80% completed when she died, some intended scenes were axed from the script and a Fake Shemp had to be used to make some other scenes.
- Posthumous Credit: Colette, une femme libre premiered 9 months after her death.
- Production Posse:
- She appeared in a copious amount of films and TV productions directed by her mother Nadine, starting at age 5 with My Love, My Love in 1967.
- She worked three times with filmmaker Alain Corneau, who was her mother's second husband and ended up buried in the same grave as her.
- Real-Life Relative: In addition to appearing in many works of her mother, she shared the screen with her father Jean-Louis more than once.
- Those Two Actors:
- She appeared in five films alongside François Cluzet, who was also her lover for a time.
- She also appeared in three productions alongside Lambert Wilson, who is a personal friend of the Trintignant family.
- What Beautiful Eyes!: Her dark eyes were among her most noted features, and it was brought up in several of her roles.
