Louis Garrel

Origins and early life

Louis Garrel was born in the thirteenth arrondissement of Paris on 14 June 1983, into a family of the French cinema: his father is the director Philippe Garrel, his grandfather was the actor Maurice Garrel, and his sister Esther is an actress.

Work and career

His place in this directory rests on his mother, the actress and director Brigitte Sy, whose published biography states that she is of Jewish origin; that is the documented route, by descent, and neither a surname nor an assumption. He was trained at the Conservatoire and won the César for most promising actor in 2006 for his father's Les Amants réguliers, in which he plays a young man of May 1968; Bernardo Bertolucci had already used him in The Dreamers.

He became one of the recognisable faces of French cinema of his generation, working with Christophe Honoré in Les Chansons d'amour, with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, with Woody Allen and with Noémie Lvovsky. As a director he made Les Deux Amis, L'Homme fidèle and La Croisade, and in 2023 won the César for best original screenplay for L'Innocent, in which he also acted. He has six César nominations in all, and works in the theatre alongside the cinema.