Louis Garrel

Louis Garrel was five when he first came on screen, in Emergency Kisses, directed by his father Philippe Garrel. Tim Lucas's DVD piece in the archive describes the scene like this: the director plays a film director in the film, with his actress wife Brigitte Sy and the five-year-old Louis opposite him, the two of them playing his wife and child. Lucas adds that the director's father, the actor Maurice Garrel, appears there too; our catalogue counts all three generations in that cast. Ginette Vincendeau, writing on The Dreamers, ranks the three young actors and puts him highest. Even so she criticises all three together, finding them short of intensity and sharpness and counting the characters spoilt rather than daring. His César record holds two wins and four nominations, and The Innocent carries four entries on its own: nominated for acting, for directing and for writing, and the winner in writing. That award was shared with Tanguy Viel and Naïla Guiguet. His first came in 2006 with Regular Lovers.