Adèle Exarchopoulos

She is best known for her leading role as Adèle in Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013), for which she earned international attention and critical acclaim; at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, she became the youngest person in the history of the festival to be awarded the Palme d'Or. For her performance in Blue Is the Warmest Colour, she won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress, the César Award for Most Promising Actress, and the Trophée Chopard Award for Female Revelation of the Year, among dozens of other accolades.

Adèle Exarchopoulos
Exarchopoulos at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019
Born	(1993-11-22) 22 November 1993 (age 30) Paris, France
Nationality	French
Occupation	Actress
Years active	2006–present
Children	1

Exarchopoulos grew up in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, near the Place des Fêtes. Her father is a French restaurant manager at the Palais omnisports de Paris-Bercy, film producer and president of the company 1660 Productions, and her mother is a French nurse. Her paternal great-grandfather was Greek.

In 2006, Exarchopoulos was spotted by an agent and made her first television appearance in an episode of the French police series R.I.S, police scientifique. At thirteen, she had a debuting film role in the 2007 film Boxes. She also appeared in the films Les Enfants de Timpelbach (2008), The Round Up (2010), Turk's Head (2010), Chez Gino (2011), Carré blanc (2011), Pieces of Me (2012) and I Used to Be Darker (2013).

 

She attracted international attention and critical acclaim for her performance in Blue Is the Warmest Colour, a 2013 film based on the 2010 French graphic novel of the same name. The film won the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Exarchopoulos and co-star Léa Seydoux were awarded the Palme d'Or alongside director Abdellatif Kechiche, becoming the only women apart from director Jane Campion to have won the award at the time; Exarchopoulos is the youngest person to ever receive the award.

 

She received critical praise and her performance was cited as one of the year's best. Indiewire critic Eric Kohn stated that he believed Exarchopoulos' performance was the best female performance of 2013. Her performance was praised for its "rawness."

Exarchopoulos discussed her process with The New York Times, explaining: "Abdellatif tried to keep us close to reality. He asked us to play with our own emotions. For example, I kept my own voice. It’s very subtle, very delicate, the things that are a part of you and the things that are a part of your character". In March 2014, she was in consideration to play Tiger Lily in Pan but lost to Rooney Mara. She then appeared in The Last Face alongside Javier Bardem and Charlize Theron, directed by Sean Penn, which premiered in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

She plays Judith in the 2015 period drama film Les Anarchistes. She also appeared in Racer and the Jailbird, a film by Belgian film director Michaël R. Roskam, and Orphan, a French film by Arnaud des Pallières in 2017. In 2023 she acted in the Ira Sachs romance Passages opposite Franz Rogowski and Ben Wishaw. Sachs described her as a cross between Jeanne Moreau and Brigitte Bardot.

In 2024, she will voice Ennui in the Pixar film Inside Out 2.

Exarchopoulos and actor Jérémie Laheurte began dating in 2012 during the filming of Blue Is the Warmest Colour, but they ended their relationship in 2015. She and her former partner, French rapper Mamadou Coulibaly, known as Doums, member of French hip hop collective group L'entourage, have a son, born in 2017. They separated in 2017.

In November 2020, after Blue Is the Warmest Colour director Abdellatif Kechiche was accused of sexual assault by an unnamed 29-year-old actress, Exarchopoulos spoke about her relationship with the director in an interview with French Elle magazine: "He's someone I'll love all my life. I think of him often, I hope he is happy. My meeting with him was decisive in my desire to make cinema. Certainly, Abdellatif is a complex being. But it upsets me because I really know him." Exarchopoulos thanked Kechiche during her speech at the 49th César Awards on 23 February 2024.