Audrey Tautou

Born: August 9, 1978
Where: Beaumont, France

The one-time oboe player in a youth orchestra sprang onto the scene as the whimsical Amelie in the Oscar-nominated film of the same name.

Since then, the erudite actress - who namechecks Oscar Wilde and Victor Hugo amongst her favourite writers - has gone on to impress in A Very Long Engagement.

The daughter of a dental surgeon and a teacher, Tautou grew up in Montlucon in central France and began acting lessons at the Cours Florent.

Small parts followed in TV movies and in 1998 she won the best young actress award in the ninth Jeune Comedien de Cinema Festival in Bezier.

Soon after she came to the attention of Tonie Marshall who gave her a role as a naive beauty salon worker in Venus Beauty Institute in 1999.

Epouse-moi and Le Libertin followed, opposite Vincent Perez, until her star-making performance in Amelie brought her to the forefront of French cinema in 2001.

Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet originally planned Emily Watson for the role - but when she dropped out he saw the billboard for Tautou's Venus Beauty Institute and cast her.

The movie was nominated for five Oscars, including best foreign language film and best screenplay.

Hollywood offers flooded in but Tautou stuck with homegrown offerings, including the assured thriller He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not as well as the Euro-pudding L'Auberge Espagnol.

In 2002, she made her English language debut with Stephen Frears' critically acclaimed thriller Dirty Pretty Things.

Next up was Alan Resnais' musical comedy Not On The Lips and the less successful Nowhere To Go But Up.

In 2004, she re-teamed with Jeunet to play a woman searching for her courtmartialed fiance in the impressive Great War drama A Very Long Engagement.