Mathilda May

Origins and early life

Mathilda May was born Karin Haïm at Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine on 8 February 1965; her father was the playwright Victor Haïm, from a Sephardi Jewish family of Greek and Turkish origin whose name had been Haïm Lévy, and her mother, Margareta Hanson, was a Swedish ballet teacher and choreographer.

Work and career

She trained as a dancer, won the first prize for classical dance at the Conservatoire in Paris at sixteen, and came to the screen almost at once, reaching an international audience in Tobe Hooper's science-fiction film Lifeforce in 1985. She won the César for most promising actress in 1988 for Claude Chabrol's Le Cri du hibou and the Romy Schneider Prize in 1989, and worked afterwards with Jean Becker, Claude Lelouch and Costa-Gavras.

In the theatre she has built a second career as a writer and director of wordless comedies, in which whole lives are played out in gesture and sound alone; Open Space and Le Banquet, the latter winning the Molière for best comedy in 2019, are the best known. Her sister Judith Réval is also an actress, and she has directed for the screen as well, with the series Chair tendre.