Charlotte Gainsbourg

Born: July 21 1971
Where: London, UK

The actress became a star as a teenager in France and then cracked America and the international film world with the leading role in the 1996 remake of Jane Eyre.

Directed by Franco Zeffirell, Gainsbourg played the adult Jane, an impoverished governess who falls in love with her brooding employer (played by William Hurt).

The daughter of French singer and actor Serge Gainsbourg and British actress Jane Birkin, she made her screen debut in 1983 as Catherine Deneuve's daughter in Love Songs.

Two years later, director Claude Miller cast her as the adolescent in L'Effrontee, landing her a Cesar (French Oscar) before she was 15.

In 1989, American audience saw Gainsbourg for the first time in The Little Thief, this time as a precocious teen.

She has since appeared the screen adaptation of Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden and Kung Fu Master!, written by and starring her mother.

Gainsbourg also starred in the Paris production of David Mamet's Oleanna in 1995.

Subseqeunt roles included her real-life husband writer-actor-director Yvan Attal's boisterous and French romantic comedy Ma Femme Est une Actrice.

In 2003, Gainsbourg returned to an American film and received strong notices for her performance in 21 Grams.