Julie Delpy

Family Delpy was born in Paris, the only child of Albert Delpy, a French actor and theater director born in Cochinchina (present-day Vietnam), and Marie Pillet, a French actress in feature films and the avant-garde theater. Her mother was also known for signing the 1971 Manifesto of the 343, signed by women demanding reproductive rights and admitting to having abortions when they were illegal in France. In Delpy's 2007 film 2 Days in Paris, her character's parents were played by her real parents and the mother acknowledged signing the manifesto, mirroring her real life. Pillet died in 2009.

Julie's parents exposed her to the arts at an early age. She said:

Career Acting

In 1984, at fourteen, Delpy was discovered by film director Jean-Luc Godard, who cast her in Détective (1985). In 1986, she appeared in Léos Carax's Mauvais Sang. In 1987, she played the title role in Bertrand Tavernier's La Passion Béatrice and was nominated for a César Award for Most Promising Actress. She used her money from the film to pay for her first trip to New York City.

Delpy became an international celebrity after starring in the 1990 film Europa Europa, directed by Agnieszka Holland. In the film, she plays a young Hitler Youth member who falls in love with the hero, Solomon Perel, not knowing he is Jewish. She did not speak German, so she performed her role in English and her dialogue was dubbed in. Delpy subsequently appeared in several Hollywood and European films, including Voyager (1991) and The Three Musketeers (1993). In 1993, she was cast by director Krzysztof Kieślowski for the female lead in Three Colours: White, the second film in Kieślowski's Three Colours trilogy. She also appeared briefly in the other two films - Blue and Red - in the same role. That year, she also appeared with Brendan Fraser and Donald Sutherland in the Percy Adlon feature Younger and Younger. In 1994, she starred with Eric Stoltz in Roger Avary's directorial debut Killing Zoe, a cult heist film capturing the Generation X zeitgeist.

Delpy achieved wider recognition for her role opposite Ethan Hawke in director Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise (1995). It received glowing reviews and was considered one of the most significant films of the '90s independent film movement. Its success led to Delpy's casting in the 1997 American film An American Werewolf in Paris. She reprised her Before Sunrise character, Céline, with a brief animated appearance in Waking Life (2001), and again in the sequels Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013). Both follow-up movies earned Delpy, who co-wrote the scripts, Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Writing and directing

Delpy began being interested in a filmmaking career when she was still a child, and enrolled in a summer directing course at New York University. She wrote and directed the short film Blah Blah Blah in 1995 which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2004, she co-wrote Before Sunset, a sequel to the 1995 film Before Sunrise, with director Linklater and co-star Hawke. Describing the experience, she said: "I'm not a feminist wearing overalls and hating the male gender. But I'm a definite feminist. I don't want to make Before Sunset into a little male fantasy, ever." She received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for her work on the film.

Delpy made her feature length directorial debut in 2002 with Looking for Jimmy, which she also wrote, produced, and starred in. In 2007, she directed, wrote, edited and co-produced 2 Days in Paris, co-starring Adam Goldberg. It also features Delpy's real-life parents, Marie Pillet and Albert Delpy, as her character's parents. In 2009, Delpy starred in The Countess as the title character Elizabeth Báthory. Her third film as a director, it also starred Daniel Brühl and William Hurt. In 2011, she wrote and directed Skylab, which received a theatrical release in France but failed to find distribution in the U.S. In 2012, she released 2 Days in New York, a sequel to her 2007 film 2 Days in Paris, starring Delpy and actor Chris Rock in a role she said she wrote specifically for him.

In 2013, she reunited with Linklater and Hawke to write Before Midnight, the sequel to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. The film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. It also screened out of competition at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival and was released in May 2013. Delpy, Linklater and Hawke were later nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards. Responding to criticism of the film's nudity, Delpy said in interview with GQ:

Some people were like, "It's not feminist. You're showing your tits and he's not showing his ass." [But] isn't it the people who are hiding women behind layers of clothes who are the misogynists? I'm a real person, so it's a statement to say, "Alright, I'm a forty-year-old woman, and this is what you get with no plastic surgery."

Lolo was Delpy's second French-language feature film, and the first she had directed since 2 Days in New York. She was also slated to write and direct the HBO movie Cancer Vixen, starring Cate Blanchett as Marisa Acocella Marchetto, a cartoonist for The New Yorker who is diagnosed with cancer. The project has yet to materialize as of 2020. In early 2014, Delpy announced her next writing-directing project would be A Dazzling Display of Splendor and focus on a family of vaudeville performers. It has also failed to enter production as of 2020.

Delpy courted controversy in 2016 when the Oscar nominations included no black honorees. "Two years ago, I said something about the Academy being very white male, which is the reality, and I was slashed to pieces by the media ... It's funny—women can't talk. I sometimes wish I were African-American because people don't bash them afterward." She later apologized for the comment.

In May 2026, she is the patron of the sixth edition of the San Diego French Film Festival with a focus of women voices. She presented the film Meet the Barbarians.

Music Delpy is also a musical artist. Three tracks from her 2003 album Julie Delpy — "A Waltz for a Night", "An Ocean Apart", and "Je t'aime tant" — were featured in Before Sunset. She composed the original score for 2 Days in Paris, in which she performed Marc Collin's "Lalala" over the closing credits. She also wrote the music for her 2009 film The Countess.

Personal life Delpy moved to New York City in 1990, then to Los Angeles a few years later. She has been a naturalized US citizen since 2001, although she also retains her French citizenship. She divides her time between Paris and Los Angeles. Their son was born in January 2009. In 2015, she married Dimitris Birbilis.

Delpy has expressed her commitment to correcting inaccurate assumptions regarding feminism, telling IndieWire: "I'm very dedicated to feminism [but] even if I'm a feminist, I don't think all women are perfect. If we're equal to men, we are also imperfect like men ... [Some men] try to say [feminists] think that women are better than men, and I want to tell them, 'no'". In a 2007 interview with Jan Lisa Huttner, she said: "I was raised by a feminist, so I'm not a feminist. I don't need to be. I’m equal to men. I have no issues with the idea that I'm the same as a man. I have my differences; I have breasts, and different plumbing, different stuff down there. But outside of this, my consciousness, my capacity at creating, my capacity at doing things is the same as a man". However, in a 2012 interview with Emily Greenhouse in The New Yorker, she said: "You know, I've been raised by feminists, and I'm such a feminist, there's no way I'm not going to be feminist, because my core is so deeply feminist that I can even make sexist comments about women, and I feel still a feminist".

Delpy has said she has been plagued by health problems since childhood and had to wear calipers at age eight. She also occasionally experiences migraines and panic-attacks.

Filmography

YearTitleRoleNotes 1978 Guerres civiles en France Segment: "La semaine sanglante"Credited as Julie Pillet 1982 Niveau moins trois Short film 1985 Classique Détective Wise young girl L'Amour ou presque Melie 1986 Mauvais Sang Lise English: Bad BloodNominated—César Award for Most Promising Actress 1987 Beatrice Beatrice de Cortemart French: La Passion BéatriceNominated—César Award for Most Promising Actress King Lear Virginia Uncredited 1988 L'autre nuit Marie 1989 The Dark Night Virgin Mary Spanish: La noche oscura Trouble Short film 1990 Europa Europa Leni 1991 Les dents de ma mère Julie Short film Voyager Sabeth Nominated—European Film Award for Best Actress 1992 Warszawa. Année 5703 Fryda English: Warsaw - Year 5703 1993 The Three Musketeers Constance Younger and Younger Melodie Killing Zoe Zoe Three Colours: Blue Dominique Cameo 1994 Three Colours: White Three Colours: Red Cameo 1995 Blah Blah Blah Short filmAlso writer, director, and producer Before Sunrise Céline Also uncredited writerNominated—MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss 1996 Tykho Moon Lena 1997 Les mille merveilles de l'univers Eva Purpur English: The Thousand Wonders of the Universe An American Werewolf in Paris Serafine Pigot Alleys and Motorways Direct-to-video 1998 The Treat Francesca L.A. Without a Map Julie Crime and Punishment Sonia Television film 1999 True Love The Passion of Ayn Rand Barbara Branden But I'm a Cheerleader Lipstick Lesbian 2000 Sand Lill 2001 Investigating Sex Chloe Also known as Intimate Affairs MacArthur Park Wendy Waking Life Céline Beginner's Luck Anya ER Nicole 7 episodes 2002 Villa des roses Louise Creteur Looking for Jimmy Al Also writer, director, producer, and editor CinéMagique Marguerite Short film 2003 Notting Hill Anxiety Festival Charlotte 2004 J'ai peur, j'ai mal, je meurs Short filmWriter, director, and composer Before Sunset Céline Also writer and composerEmpire Award for Best ActressSan Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle Award for Best ActressNominated—National Society of Film Critics Award for Best ActressNominated—Online Film Critics Society Award for Best ActressNominated—Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best ActressNominated—Academy Award for Best Adapted ScreenplayNominated—National Society of Film Critics Award for Best ScreenplayNominated—Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Adapted ScreenplayNominated—Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted ScreenplayNominated—Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay Frankenstein Caroline Frankenstein Miniseries 2005 Broken Flowers Sherry 2006 The Legend of Lucy Keyes Jeanne Cooley The Hoax Nina van Pallandt Guilty Hearts Charlotte 2007 The Air I Breathe Gina 2 Days in Paris Marion Also writer, director, producer, editor, and composerPrix Jacques Prévert du Scénario for Best Original ScreenplayNominated—César Award for Best Original ScreenplayNominated—European Film Awards Audience Award for Best FilmNominated—Independent Spirit Award for Best First FilmNominated—Globe de Cristal for Best Film 2009 The Countess Elizabeth Báthory Also writer, director, producer, and composer 2011 Skylab Anna Also writer and director 2012 2 Days in New York Marion Also writer, director, producer, and composer 2013 Before Midnight Céline Also writerAARP Award for Best ScreenwriterBroadcast Film Critics Association – Louis XIII Genius AwardDublin Film Critics' Circle Award for Best ScreenplayHollywood Film Award for Screenwriter of the YearLos Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best ScreenplayNational Society of Film Critics Award for Best ScreenplaySan Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Adapted ScreenplayWomen Film Critics Circle Award for Best ScreenplayNominated—Academy Award for Best Adapted ScreenplayNominated—Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Adapted ScreenplayNominated—Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Adapted ScreenplayNominated—Denver Film Critics Society Award for Best Adapted ScreenplayNominated—Detroit Film Critics Society Award for Best ScreenplayNominated—Independent Spirit Award for Best ScreenplayNominated—Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Adapted ScreenplayNominated—St. Louis Film Critics Association Award for Best Adapted ScreenplayNominated—San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award for Best Adapted ScreenplayNominated—Satellite Award for Best Adapted ScreenplayNominated—Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Adapted ScreenplayNominated—Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted ScreenplayNominated—Detroit Film Critics Society Award for Best ActressNominated—Dublin Film Critics' Circle Award for Best ActressNominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or MusicalNominated—Guardian Film Award for Best ActorNominated—Independent Spirit Award for Best Female LeadNominated—National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress (Runner-Up)Nominated—Online Film Critics Society Award for Best ActressNominated—Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Making a Scene Short filmWriter 2015 Avengers: Age of Ultron Madame B. Lolo Violette Also writer and directorVenice International Film Festival - Laguna Sud Award for Best Film 2016 Wiener-Dog Dina 2017 The Bachelors Carine 2019 My Zoe Isabelle Also director and writerNominated—2019 Toronto International Film Festival - Platform Prize 2021 On the Verge Justine Also creator, executive producer, writer, and director 2023 The Lesson Hélène Sinclair 2024 Meet the Barbarians Joëlle Also writer and director 2025 Hostage Vivienne Toussaint Miniseries Post-production Filming

Awards and nominations Year Award Category Nominated work Result1987 César AwardMost Promising Actress Mauvais sang 1988 La Passion Béatrice 1991 European Film Award Best Actress The Voyager 1995 MTV Movie Award Best Kiss Before Sunrise 2004 San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award Best Actress Before Sunset 2005 Academy Award Best Adapted Screenplay 2005 Writers Guild of America Award Best Adapted Screenplay 2005 Empire Award Best Actress 2005 Independent Spirit Award Best Screenplay 2005 Online Film Critics Society Award Best Actress Best Adapted Screenplay 2007 Mons International Festival of Love Films Award Coup de Coeur 2 Days in Paris 2008 César Award Best Original Screenplay 2014 Golden Globe Best Actress - Motion Picture Comedy or Musical Before Midnight 2014 Academy Award Best Adapted Screenplay