"When I'm acting I feel blood in my veins. I prefer cinema to reality." ~*~ Eva Green ~*~ |  Eve Gaëlle Green was born by Caesarean section at the St Vincent de Paul hospital in the 14th Arrondissement of Paris on the 5th of July, 1980. Her father, Walter Green, moved there from Sweden with his family when he was 16, and grew up to become a dentist. He did not speak Swedish in the family home which is why Eva does not speak Swedish (just a few words). He also never took his family back to Sweden (The first time Eva visited her father's home country was for the promotion of Casino Royale). Eva's mother - at the time not married to Walter - is the Algerian-born actress Marlène Jobert, a huge star in France in the Sixties and Seventies (now a hit children's author). Eva would be the first of non-identical twins, born 4 minutes before her sister, Joy (who is now married to an Italian Count and living in Normandy). Her mother's fame was such that an aura of paranoia surrounded the births. Fearing that her new-borns would be kidnapped, Jobert would change their names while they were still in the cradle and quickly whisk them off to the family's country house about 30 kilometres outside the city, a 70 hectares estate that Walter used to rent out to his friends. To avoid pollution, Jobert would take the kids out there each weekend, the family spending weekdays in Paris's upmarket 17th Arrondissement, just east of the Bois de Boulogne, inbetween Montmartre and the Arc de Triomphe. Marlène would care for them from 6 till 11am, a young nanny then taking over. Her mother was so famous in France that Eva and Joy appeared with her on the cover of Paris Match in 1980 when they were just two months old (shown in the picture above). Given her family's background, it was not surprising that Eva would become an actress.
| |  Eva's family's history in theatre and film would have convinced her that such a life was possible. This would be made all the clearer when, at age 10, she saw her mother make a comeback with the TV hit Avocat D'Office. It was not until the age of 14 that she'd give up her earlier ambitions to be an Egyptologist and begin to consider a career as an actress as something to aim for. The change was due to a viewing of Francois Truffaut's 1975 masterpiece, L'Histoire D'Adele H, where Isabelle Adjani played the daughter of Victor Hugo, thwarted in her love for an English soldier and descending into madness. It was a great female role, inspirational for young Eva. But already she knew that this life would not just be given to her. Studying at L'Ecole Fenelon Sainte-Marie, a private school close to her family's home in Paris, she worked hard. Her focus was on grades, not boys. Summer trips to America, London, Ireland and Ramsgate helped Eva to improve her English. Growing up (and even still) Eva was very shy. Her mother thought that she was too fragile to ever make it as an actress. Yet she clearly had an exhibitionist side to her and, by the age of 16, she had begun to behave in a far more flamboyant manner. She found her school too normal, too bourgeois, too far removed from her theatrical ambitions, and transferred to another. Inspired, unusually, by the German punk star and TV personality Nina Hagen, she'd dye her hair black, colour her lips and eyelids green or purple, wear gothic crushed velvet and a fancy bra. Sometimes she'd turn up at school dressed as a geisha or a hindu. She was rapidly becoming herself. Eve transferred to the American School when she was 17, situated in the Saint Cloud district of western Paris. Formed in 1946, this was an independent co-ed school run, as the name suggests, on American lines. Kids would receive a wide and cosmopolitan education (Green studied Modern Languages under Denise Delacroix), but what grabbed Eva's attention was a state-of-the-art Performing Arts Centre the school had launched in 1990. Now at last she could involve herself properly in thespianism. Still, it was not enough. After one year Eva left the American School to study with the theatrical specialist Eva St Paul. This was a multi-discipline course where students would be instructed not just in acting but also dance and music. They'd also be taught that actors are products; they should be aware of the market and learn to promote themselves. With her eyes firmly on the prize, Eva imposed upon herself a tough work ethic, St Paul later saying "In 20 years I have only met two students who were really hardworking. Eva Green is one of those two". She'd also add "There is something very distinctive about Eva. She is super-tough. She can turn down whoever, curse like a man and be soft at the same time". After 3 years with Eva St Paul (who still remains something of a mentor), Eva moved to London for a 10-week polishing course at the Webber Douglas School, situated above the Drayton Arms in Old Brompton Road, South Kensington. Eva appreciated their very direct approach, feeling that the work set for her in France, concentrating on single scenes, had been too vague.
| | Returning to Paris, Eva started work straight away. For her graduation from the Eva St Paul School, she played a part from Strindberg's Miss Julie for a mock audition. One of the external examiners was a casting director who'd already sent Eva for an audition for Roman Coppola's directorial debut, CQ. At the test, Eva wore a leather costume and blonde wig and carried a gun, she felt foolish and failed to win a part. However, the casting director remembered her well and cast her in a new three-monologue play called Jalousie En Trois Fax (Jealousy In Three Faxes) which ran at the Petit Theatre de Paris on the Rue Blanche between September 18th and December 31st, 2001. Eva played Iris, a plum role for a young actress. Addressing the audience directly, voicing her rivalry, her dreams and her pain, she'd slide from happiness at her new relationship into a newfound jealousy and then despair. Eva was evidently up for the challenge, being nominated as Best Newcomer at Les Molieres, the French theatre awards, and proclaimed the sensation of the season. The next year, 2002, Eva moved on to a new adaptation of the 18th Century French comedy Turcaret. Written by Alain-Rene Le Sage in 1709, this would be directed by Gerard Desarthe who, back in 1979 had appeared down the bill in La Guerre Des Polices, a movie starring Eva's mother. An extravagant period piece, the play would tour across France between February and the end of May, taking in Nantes' Maison de la Culture de Loire Atlantique, Paris's MC93 at Bobigny, Lyon's Theatre des Celestins and Lille's Theatre du Nord.
 | |  Turcaret provided a good experience, experience that Eva very much needed as she'd already been cast as one of the three leads in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers. Eva's parents were against her taking the part, concerned by the story of Maria Schneider, who'd starred in Bertolucci's Last Tango In Paris then disappeared, only to turn up in an Italian psychiatric hospital. Marlène was still not sure that Eva wasn't too fragile to be an actress. But her daughter hurled herself into the role, being at first aloof and annoyingly playful, then charming and seductive as she acted out scenes from classic movies - depicting the likes of Garbo, Dietrich and Seberg. The role demanded a wide range of emotional responses from her. Eva had to be a silly girl, a serious film student and also desperately, painfully frustrated when pushed to grow up and leave her brother's side. Less importantly, but certainly more controversially, the part demanded an utterly unashamed full frontal nudity and a sexual frankness that most actresses would never dare approach. "It's not gratuitous," she'd explain later. "It's very pure, and not sick. We are like animals, pure animals - young puppies that are free". She had, she said, "no apology for anything you see me doing" and would express her anger at cuts made for an American market that could tolerate terrible extremes of violence but not sex. Bertolucci also felt that her real-life experience as a twin might help her in the role.
| | Life was going well for Eva. Since 2000 she'd been in a relationship with the actor/director Yann Claassen, several years her senior. The Dreamers brought her to the attention of Giorgio Armani who, claiming she reminded him of the great Italian actresses of the 1960s, would base his Spring collection of 2005 around her. Many companies were now be keen to use Eva's striking features. Over the next several years she'd front campaigns for Lancôme, Dior, Montblanc and Breil Jewels. Onscreen, 2004 would bring an appearance in a big budget French adaptation of Arsène Lupin, created by novelist Maurice Leblanc. Arsène Lupin was expensive as far as Euro movies go, but its budget was tiny compared to those of Eva's next three movies. The first of these was Ridley Scott's Kingdom Of Heaven, a part she scored through persistence and luck. Though she'd performed five or more screen tests, Scott was still unsure whether Green was sufficiently regal for the role. However, she would eventually be hired, at one week's notice and, with her mother coming along for guidance, would find herself performing amidst the huge sets of Scott's fake Jerusalem. This could have been an excellent part, with Eva as an embattled kingmaker torn by divided loyalties. But the movie was so long that Scott left much of her work out, leaving her as a mysterious and near-unnecessary presence. It was a decision he later publicly regretted, restoring many of her scenes to the version released on DVD. It was an added disappointment for Green, Kingdom Of Heaven's schedule having forced her to miss out on The Constant Gardener (for which Rache Weisz would win an Oscar) and Hilary Swank's vampish part in Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia. But Eva's career was still on the rise. She split from Yann Claassen, and began a relationship with Marton Csokas, 14 years her senior.
| |  Although impressive, Kingdom Of Heaven was not a hit. However her next release definately was. This was Casino Royale which would introduce Daniel as the new James Bond and take the character back to his gritty roots. Eva would play Vesper Lynd, a British Treasury official, who delivers Bond's stake money and attempts to curb his recklessness. Bond girls traditionally start off frosty, then melt into Bond's arms, but Vesper Lynd was different. Initially smart and business-like, she's glamorous but real, deeply disturbed by the ultraviolence that erupts around her and hopelessly compromised by the enemy's machinations. Her shower scene with Craig was telling. The producers wanted her to strip - she was, after all, the girl from The Dreamers - but she refused, feeling it inappropriate for a character who's just witnessed several horrible deaths. The resulting scene, with Green sitting fully clothed under a stream of water, horrified, disgusted and shaken, a bruised (and clothed) Bond attempting to comfort her, gave the film a real emotional value and lent weight to a relationship that drove the plot. Eva was very wary about accepting the role at all, being well aware of her need to escape the tag of "that sex girl from The Dreamers". Her interest was not seized until Paul Haggis, Oscar-winning writer of Crash and Million Dollar Baby was hired to strengthen the characters. Then it all came in a rush. Flown out to Prague just days before shooting began, Eva performed a casual audition then a far more formal affair, on-set and in costume. She later admitted to being sick beforehand. The producers weren't keen to hire a French actress to play a character supposed to have a clipped Brit accent, but Eva had studied English for many years and underwent intense voice training. And evidently ,it worked. Casino Royale would prove to be a huge hit with audiences and critics alike.
| | Eva set up home in London, living first in Primrose Hill, then Little Venice, and the Brits took to her well. Not only did Casino Royale take a massive 55 million at the Brit box office, Eva was awarded a BAFTA as a Rising Star. But she was seen as more than just a film star; she was a real, straight-talking character with a great sense of humour, proved by her appearance at Dior's 30th Anniversary show in Versailles, when she upstaged the models by showing up in a shocking pink kimono, a goth-geisha look designed by John Galliano himself. This look was very Eva, in a way just an expensive reprise of her behaviour at school a decade before.
| | In 2007 Eva landed a role in another major release, The Golden Compass, a star-studded adaptation of Philip Pullman's bestseller Northern Lights, the first in the His Dark Materials trilogy. Her profile was raised by these three consecutive blockbusters, and it was inevitable that Eva would seek out smaller, more artistically testing projects. 2008 would see her in Gerald McMorrow's Franklyn and she is currently filming the 2009 movie 'Cracks' in which she plays a school teacher, Miss G.
Eva started her career with many high profile movies but the quality of her performances, her courage and integrity, proves that she deserves all of the attention she gets. She will definately be around for a long time. |
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