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Biography of Aundrey TautouAudrey Tautou (IPA: [oˈd̪ʁe t̪oˈt̪u]; , born August 9, 1978) is a French film actress, known to worldwide audiences for playing the title character in the award-winning French film Amélie (2001, Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain) and also Sophie Neveu in The Da Vinci Code (2006).
Tautou was born in the Puy-de-Dôme département of Auvergne, and was raised in Montluçon in the nearby Allier, still in Auvergne. Her father is a dental surgeon and her mother is a teacher. She has a younger brother and two younger sisters. She has always been, and remains today, absolutely fascinated with monkeys.[citation needed] Her childhood hero was Dian Fossey, the primatologist, and she wanted to follow in her hero's footsteps.[citation needed] Even now, many of her trips and voyages abroad are influenced by her passions for monkeys and gorillas. In fact, after the premiere of the film Amélie (for which she received phenomenal amounts of paparazzi and press coverage) she travelled to the jungles of Indonesia to help with the preservation of a monkey sanctuary. Many may have claimed that she left France because of all the media attention that she was unwillingly receiving, while others say it was fuelled by her passions for the animals.[citation needed] Tautou showed an interest for comedy at an early age and started her acting lessons at the Cours Florent. This theatrical institution is highly prestigious and she is one of several famous actors to have passed through its doors (others including Muriel Robin, Daniel Auteuil and Guillaume Canet). It is said that she almost didn't actually go through with the Cours Florent course, because when she was living up in Paris, she was living on the same road as a model agency and mistook all the models walking past her home to be the average Parisian woman.[citation needed] This apparently made her feel immediately insecure,[citation needed] but nonetheless, she continued the course and came out at the end and went on to star in some of French cinema's biggest and most famous films.
Tautou has said that Meryl Streep, Paul Newman, Juliette Lewis, Jodie Foster and Julianne Moore are her acting idols. In 1998, Tautou participated in a Star Search-like competition sponsored by Canal+ called "Jeunes Premiers" (The Young Debut) and won Best Young Actress at the 9th Béziers Festival of Young Actors. Then, she came to the attention of Tonie Marshall, who gave her a role in the César-winning Venus Beauty Institute (1999, aka Vénus beauté (institut)). In 2000 , she won the Prix Suzanne Bianchetti as her country's most promising young film actress.
Already well-known in France for her work in Venus Beauty Institute, in 2001 Tautou rose to international fame for her performance as the eccentric Amélie in the romantic French comedy Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain. In June 2004 she was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). She accepted the invitation and is still a member as of September 1, 2006.
In 2005, Tautou worked in her first full Hollywood production, opposite Tom Hanks, in the film version of Dan Brown's best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code, directed by Ron Howard and released in May 2006. She acted alongside Gad Elmaleh in Pierre Salvadori's Hors de prix, released December 13, 2006. Tautou says she still considers France her base, and plans to pursue a career predominantly there rather than crossing over to the United States. As she told Stevie Wong of The Straits Times, "I am, at the end of the day, a French actress. I am not saying I will never shoot an English-language movie again, but my home, my community, my career is rooted in France. I would never move to Los Angeles".
Tautou starred with Guillaume Canet (best known outside of France for his role in the film adaptation of The Beach) in Claude Berri's French-language Ensemble, c'est tout in 2007.
Her favourite authors are Victor Hugo, Oscar Wilde, Paul Auster, and Timothy Zahn; and her favourite poets are Charles Baudelaire and Tristan Tzara. Tautou's favourite music composers are Ravel, Mozart and Frédéric Chopin.
Tautou takes pictures of each reporter who interviews her and keeps them in a scrapbook. Tautou has said that "Everyone thinks I have an ethnic origin", though she is actually "100-percent French". In France, many consider her as the "typical Occitan Auvergnate". She was brought up attending church, though she has now stated that she is "not officially" a Catholic.
The Brand New song 'Tautou', from the album Déjà Entendu is named after her.
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