As the daughter of an actress and a sculptor, Juliette Binoche grew up surrounded by the arts. Born March 9, 1964, in Paris, she acted in several films by her early twenties, including Jean-Luc Godard's controversial retelling of the Virgin birth, Hail Mary (1985).

Binoche achieved international acclaim for her role in the sexually charged The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), and by the 1990s, she was one of the world's most well-regarded actresses, thanks to dramatic turns in Louis Malle's Damage (1992) and Krzysztof Kieslowski's Blue (1993).

Her role as sympathetic nurse Hana in The English Patient (1996) earned Binoche an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. She has also shown a flair for lighter fare in Chocolat (2000), for which she earned a Best Actress nomination, and the French romantic comedy Jet Lag (2002).