Isabelle Yasmine Adjani

Isabelle Yasmine Adjani is a French film actress and singer. Adjani has appeared in 30 films since 1970. She won four César Awards in Possession (1981), One Deadly Summer (1983), Camille Claudel (1988), and Queen Margot (1994). Also she received two Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. She performs in French, English, and German.

Adjani was born in an immigrant neighborhood Gennevilliers, a suburb of Paris to an Algerian father, Mohammed Cherif Adjani, and a German mother, Augusta, called "Gusti". She grew up speaking German fluently as a first language. After winning a school recitation contest, she began acting in amateur theater by the age of twelve. At the age of 14, she starred in her first motion picture Le Petit bougnat (1970)

She first gained fame as a classical actress for her interpretation of Agnès, the main female role in Molière's L'Ecole des femmes, but soon left the Comédie française she had joined in 1972 to pursue a film career. After minor roles in several films, she enjoyed modest success in the 1974 film La Gifle (or The Slap). The following year, she landed her first major role in François Truffaut's The Story of Adèle H. Critics enthused over her performance, with Pauline Kael calling her acting talents "Prodigious". All this attention resulted in a nomination for the Best Actress Oscar and offers for rôles in Hollywood films, such as Walter Hill's 1978 crime thriller The Driver. She then played Lucy in Werner Herzog's 1979 remake of Nosferatu (1979) .

In 1981, Adjani received the Cannes Film Festival's best actress award for the Merchant Ivory film Quartet based on the novel by Jean Rhys, and for the horror film Possession. The following year, she received her first César Award for Possession, in which she portrays a woman having a nervous breakdown. In 1983, she won the César, for her depiction of a vengeful woman in the blockbuster One Deadly Summer.

In 1989, she co-produced and starred in a biopic of the tragic sculptor Camille Claudel. She received her third César and second Oscar nomination for her role in the film, which was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Following this publicity, she was chosen by People magazine as one of the '50 Most Beautiful People' in the world. Her fourth César win was for the 1994 film Queen Margot, an ensemble epic directed by Patrice Chéreau.

Adjani has two sons: Barnabé Nuytten with Bruno Nuytten, and Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis from her six-year relationship with Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Gabriel-Kane was born in New York City in 1995, several months after her relationship with Day-Lewis ended.

Adjani was also engaged to composer Jean Michel Jarre, but they broke up publicly in 2004.

In 1987, some French media outlets incorrectly reported that Adjani was dying of AIDS, forcing her to appear on television to deny it.

In 2009, she denounced statements by Pope Benedict XVI on the futility of condoms in AIDS prevention.

Ref: www.wikipedia.org