Esther Garrel

Origins and early life

Esther Garrel was born in Paris on 18 February 1991, daughter of the director Philippe Garrel and of the actress and director Brigitte Sy, and sister of the actor Louis Garrel.

Work and career

As with her brother, her place here rests on her mother, whose published biography states that she is of Jewish origin: the route is descent, documented, and not a name. She began as a child in her father's films and became an adult actress in them, in La Jalousie in 2013 and L'Amant d'un jour in 2017, in which she carries the film almost alone; French critics wrote of a presence that seemed to have nothing performed about it.

Outside France she is known for Luca Guadagnino's Call Me by Your Name, also 2017, where she plays Marzia; she has also worked with Jacques Doillon, Bertrand Bonello and Christophe Honoré, and in Le Sel des larmes. She works in the theatre as well as the cinema and has directed short films. Her family belongs to three generations of French film-making, from her grandfather the actor Maurice Garrel onward, and her own work has stayed with the small, close, spoken cinema that her father made his own.