Veteran French actor Isabelle Huppert is all set to receive the Lumiere Award in the city of Lyon in October.
The Lumiere Award honours a leading figure in the world of cinema and his/her entire body of work. Created by Cannes chief Thierry Fremaux, the Lumiere Film Festival celebrates classic and contemporary cinema each fall, variety.com reported. Former recipients of the honour include Tim Burton, Jane Campion, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Francis Ford Coppola, Ken Loach, Catherine Deneuve, Jane Fonda, Pedro Almodovar, Milos Forman, the Dardenne brothers, and Wong Kar-wai, among others. Huppert called the honour a “magnificent prize”.
“It’s a great honour for me to receive the Lumiere Award. It’s a magnificent prize, and so is the festival. It’s an award that bears the name of the inventors of cinema! Receiving it fills me with joy and pride,” said Huppert. An acclaimed actress who films an average of two to three films a year, Huppert has earned global recognition for her work over more than five decades.
She won her first major award in 1978 at Cannes with 'Violette', the first of eight films she did with French New Wave icon Claude Chabrol. The 71-year-old star is famous for playing complex women unafraid to challenge conventions. In 2001, her role as a sexually repressed piano instructor who enters into a sadomasochistic relationship with one of her pupils in Michael Haneke’s 'The Piano Teacher' won her best actress honour at Cannes. She also headed the Cannes jury in 2009.
Her other collaborations with Haneke include his second Palme d’or winner 'Amour' in 2012, and 'Happy End' in 2017. In France, she has been nominated for a whopping 16 Best Actress Cesar awards and won two for her performances in 'La Ceremonie' and Paul Verhoeven’s 'Elle', which also earned her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in 2017. She has worked with renowned French auteurs such as Jean-Lud Godard, Jacques Doillon, Maurice Pialat, Benoît Jacquot, Olivier Assayas, and François Ozon, among others.
Huppert made her first foray into Hollywood in 1980 with Michael Cimino's 'Heaven’s Gate'. She works largely in independent and small-budget cinema in the US and has collaborated with the likes of Curtis Hanson, Hal Hartley, David O. Russell, and more recently, Neil Jordan and Matthew Weiner in 'The Romanoffs'.
