Virginie Efira in 5 roles

On the occasion of the release of Suddenly which won her the Cannes Interpretation Prize, a look back at 5 key characters in her journey as an actress unlike any other

Virginie Efira in Off-Prime (2007-2008)

Virginie Efira dreamed of being an actress very early on. She even joined the Conservatory in Belgium but without going all the way. “ I considered this profession so sacred that it blocked me. I couldn’t let go. So I had to free myself from this first desire to better come back to it later. » It was right at this moment that she was offered TV animation, an exercise in which she excelled in Belgium and then in France, notably with Nouvelle star. Going from the small to the big screen is already quite a challenge, but imagining such a popular TV presenter one day becoming a film actress is an almost impossible mission. “ I had completely abandoned this idea. “, she confides. And then M6 offers him Off-Primea series where she plays herself with delicious self-deprecation. The audience ratings aren’t necessarily there, but her acting talent hits the mark. Something unlocked which led her, after a short stint on Canal +, to launch a career as an actress in earnest in 2009. In the cinema and in the theater in Marigny opposite Maruschka Detmers in Nathalie Ribout

Alice Lantins in 20 years apart (2013)

In a handful of films (Love is better in pairs, The chance of my life…), Virginie Efira establishes herself in the field of romantic comedy, each time with an ease and excitement from the public that could have quickly locked her into this job. As such, this 20 years apart will mark a tipping point. She plays a forty-something, editor-in-chief of a magazine, faking an improbable love affair with a 20-year-old to ruin her image before losing herself in this strange game. And if this film earns her her biggest box office score since her debut (1.4 million admissions), she also understands that it is time to try to move on. “ I did few auditions in those years because it was taken for granted that a pre-existing link existed between the public and me. And coming from TV, I was perfectly aware that only theatrical successes would be able to give me access to the small world of cinema to, from there, try to plow my own furrow. So above all I tried to do the best with what was offered to me.. »

Victoria Spick in Victoria (2016)

And it is right at the moment when the risk of confinement looms that the encounter occurs that will change his path. That of Justine Triet. For his second feature film after The Battle of Solferinothe filmmaker gives birth to a portrait of a woman caught in an emotional spiral that her professional situation will implode. Lightness and complexity come together here, under the claimed influence of Howard Hawks, Billy Wilder, Blake Edwards, Woody Allen and James L. Brooks. And it was seeing Virginie Efira… in the show Meet in unknown land by Frédéric Lopez that Justine Triet has the trigger. This Victoria will be her and no one else. A great inspiration. The enthusiastic reception that the film received at the Cannes Critics’ Week launched its career in theaters. And will change the way the profession views Virginie Efira, beyond her very first nomination for the César for best actress, as her sense of comedy and the rhythm that goes with it dynamite the screen. The actress is fully aware of this and will therefore work to explore these new paths that suddenly become available to her. “ On this plateau, I experienced the sensation of having before me what I had always been groping for. And the certainty that I could never go back. I immediately knew that I was going to have to think carefully about what happened next to try to find comparable sensations. That’s why I didn’t accept anything straight away. “. She will meet Justine Triet to Sybil in 2019 and above all the bond of friendship formed will never be undone.

Mia in See Paris again (2022)

Nominated unsuccessfully for Victoria, An Impossible Love And The Great Bath (2019) and Goodbye idiots (2021), Virginie Efira wins the César for best actress for this role as a survivor of an attack who tries to regain her memory and more broadly the course of her life months after this disastrous night. A character and a story inspired by Alice Winocour by her own brother who was one of the hostages at the Bataclan on November 13, 2015. At the release, the director explained that she had chosen Virginie Efira because she had found in her what she liked in her character “She is not complacent with her suffering, she is on a quest, open to others.” And the actress, in the wake of Benedetta And Madeleine Collinsconfirmed his ease in evolving on more dramatic terrain without ever forcing the line or the emotion. The right note from the beginning to the end of the different scores. Which will earn him a new appointment in 2024 for Love and the forests.

Marie-Lou in Suddenly (2026)

“ The project of a lifetime “. This is how Virginie Efira described her collaboration with the director of Drive my carRyusuke Hamaguchi, long before his Cannes selection. She plays a nursing home director with methods that go off the beaten track in a film of incredible freedom where poetry and politics become one, where a foot orgy scene resonates with a paper board demonstration of the ravages of capitalism. “ Reading this scenario had a physical effect on me. A very strong emotion without being able to analyze the conduits through which it unfolds. And, above all, right away, I have the feeling of hearing my voice. Without obviously knowing if Ryusuke was going to hear it », Explains the actress. The Japanese filmmaker knew how to hear this and Virginie Efira impresses precisely with her fluid way of slipping into his world. As natural, as precise and as accurate in scenes with heavy dialogue as in those where silence prevails. And logically rewarded with her partner Tao Okamoto with a Cannes interpretation prize. From the sets of M6 to the stage of the Grand Théâtre Lumière, a truly extraordinary journey