Agnès Soral

Agnès Soral (born Agnès Marielle Christiane Bonnet, 8 June 1960) is a French-Swiss actress, best known for her role in the film So Long, Stooge (Tchao Pantin, 1983).

Early life Agnès Bonnet was born in Aix-les-Bains to a French-Swiss family. She is the youngest of three siblings. Her father worked as a notary and a legal advisor. Her family has roots in Soral, Switzerland, and has long used "Bonnet de Soral" as an unofficial name. She later used "Soral" as a stage name and adopted it as her legal name in the early 1990s.

During the 1960s, her family moved to Meudon, in the Paris area. She later said that she had grown up in a dysfunctional family, and described her father as a "narcissistic pervert" who mistreated his wife and beat his children. In 1973, her father received a prison sentence for fraud in Switzerland. Her family, facing financial ruin, left the Parisian region and settled in Grenoble, then Annemasse.

Soral next appeared on television, getting her breakthrough role six years later in the crime drama So Long, Stooge (1983), a film also directed by Claude Berri where she co-starred with Coluche. For her performance as a wayward punk girl, Soral was nominated to the César Award for Best Supporting Actress and the César Award for Best Female Revelation, though she won neither.

Soral's subsequent work included starring roles in the comedies Réveillon chez Bob (1984) and Twist again à Moscou (1986), the science fiction film Diesel (1985), the drama I Love You (also 1986) and the crime film Bleu comme l'enfer (still 1986). Later on, she played mostly supporting roles in film, also appearing in many television series and working in theatre.

Personal life

Soral is the mother of two daughters. She is a committed environmentalist

She is the younger sister of author Alain Soral. During the 1980s, after she achieved prominence as an actress, she allowed him to use her stage name (not yet her legal name) as his pen name. Alain Soral initially gained some fame as a self-styled Marxist and an antifeminist provocateur, before evolving into a well-known far-right, antisemitic ideologue, conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier. Agnès Soral has condemned her brother's views; they have been estranged since the 2000s. In 2015, she published the book Frangin (French slang for Brother) which recounted her family history and her relationship with her brother.

Theatre

Selected filmography

Publication Frangin, Michel Lafon, 2015,