12 Best Marion Cotillard Movies

A transformation with few equals in film history. Cotillard fully inhabited the tormented soul of chanson icon Édith Piaf: from a brash street singer in Paris to a wreck bent by arthritis and addiction at barely forty. Her rendition of 'Non, je ne regrette rien' still gives goosebumps and rightly earned her the Oscar.

As the tragic shade of Cobb's (Leonardo DiCaprio) late wife, Mal is the most dangerous obstacle in Christopher Nolan's dream worlds. Cotillard doesn't play her as a simple villain, but as a devastating projection of guilt and suppressed love that blurs the line between reality and illusion.

After a horrific accident, orca trainer Stéphanie loses both lower legs. Director Jacques Audiard shows her recovery through an unlikely, raw bond with a homeless street fighter (Matthias Schoenaerts). Cotillard's physical courage and the scene in which she moves her arms again to Katy Perry's 'Firework' are breathtakingly beautiful.

The Dardenne brothers stripped Cotillard of every trace of glamour. As Sandra, she has a single weekend to personally convince her factory coworkers to give up their annual bonus so she can keep her job. Cotillard's nervous exhaustion, shame and will to survive earned her a rare Oscar nomination for a French-language role.

At first, Miranda Tate seems a noble philanthropist and ally of Bruce Wayne, but in the explosive climax of Nolan's trilogy she's revealed as the ruthless daughter of Ra's al Ghul, determined to finish her father's work in Gotham City.

In Woody Allen's nostalgic dream-stroll through the 1920s, Cotillard is the enchanting muse of Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani. Her melancholy longing for the Belle Époque perfectly captures the film's core message: people always dream of a golden age that isn't their own.

Opposite Michael Fassbender, Cotillard brought chilling, icy control to literature's most famous manipulator. Her restrained tear during the 'Out, damned spot' monologue in a misty Scottish chapel makes her madness all the more haunting.

In Robert Zemeckis' stylish World War II thriller, Cotillard plays a French Resistance fighter in Casablanca who marries a Canadian intelligence officer (Brad Pitt), until suspicion arises that she's a German spy. Cotillard's inscrutable gaze keeps the tension going until the very last second.

For her supporting role as the vengeful courtesan Tina Lombardi in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's visual World War I epic, Cotillard won her first César. With a deadly hatpin and razor-sharp thirst for revenge, she steals every scene.

As the proud coat-check girl who steals the heart of bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), Cotillard brings fiery loyalty to Michael Mann's crime drama. Her interrogation scene, in which she refuses to betray her lover despite brutal treatment, shows pure backbone.

In Steven Soderbergh's eerily prophetic pandemic film, Cotillard plays a World Health Organization epidemiologist who travels to Hong Kong to trace 'patient zero' and is then taken hostage by desperate villagers demanding vaccines. Her moral integrity gives the cool drama a warm human anchor.

In Leos Carax's baroque pop opera, Cotillard plays world-famous soprano Ann. Her tragic marriage to a self-destructive stand-up comedian (Adam Driver) and the birth of their marionette child make for a wild, hypnotic odyssey.