Biography

Marie-Josée Croze first studied fine arts before opting for the stage at La Veillée-Prospero Theatre workshop in Montreal. In 1993 she got her first movie part in La Florida (1993) and started working for numerous Canadian TV series and movies.

In 2000, with her performance in Denis Villeneuve's Maelström (2000) she got national (Jutra and Genie best actress awards) and international recognition, and began shooting with some of the most acclaimed Canadian directors: Atom Egoyan for Ararat (2002) and Denys Arcand for The Barbarian Invasions (2003), for which she got the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003.

After the Cannes award many French directors used her incredible versatility: she played a mysterious and glamorous movie star in Ordo (2004), adapted from Donald E. Westlake's novel, a single mother overwhelmed by her responsibilities in Jean-Pierre Denis' drama La petite Chartreuse (2005), a down-to-earth architect in the romantic comedy The Story of My Life (2004).

Chosen by Steven Spielberg to play the seductive Dutch assassin in Munich (2005), Marie-Josée Croze associated with high profile projects. She played the mother of the young and rebellious peasant from Eugène Le Roy's novel in the historical drama Jacquou le croquant (2007), and Dr. Beck's murdered wife in Tell No One (2006), the French adaptation of Harlan Coben's novel.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: user

In 1999, filmmaker Denis Villeneuve gave the lead role in Maelström to Marie-Josée Croze, a young Franco-Canadian actress already known to Québécois audiences thanks to her performances in a number of popular films and TV shows. The film had a major impact on her career, leading her to play a rebellious young woman in Atom Egoyan's Ararat and win numerous awards in festivals across the world. Before long, art-house film seemed to have become the actress's path of choice.

The Barbarian Invasions, a 2003 Academy Award-winning film by director Denys Arcand, gave her the opportunity to undertake the role of a junkie, a performance rewarded by the jury of the Cannes film festival, helmed that year by Patrice Chéreau. After her Best Actress Award, soon followed a successful foray into the world of French film, including features in Guillaume Canet's Tell No One, Zabou Breitman's Someone I Loved, Tony Gatlif's Korkoro, Jean Becker's Love Me No More and Nicole Garcia's A View of Love, to name but a few.

In the world of theater, Marie-Josée Croze performed Requiem for a Nun, a play by Albert Camus directed by Jacques Lassalle, at the Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris. In 2013, she returned to the stage once more to play in State Lies at the Théâtre de la Madeleine.

Across the Atlantic, Julian Schnabel, who had loved her performance as the Dutchwoman Mata Hari in Steven Spielberg's Munich, thought of her while preparing his next film and proposed she play the speech therapist in the The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

After having lived ten years in France, Marie-Josée Croze obtained dual citizenship in 2012.

In 2014, she starred in Cavalry by Irish director John McDonagh and alongside Mathieu Kassovitz in Matthieu Delaporte's Nobody from Nowhere.

She spent much of 2014 on set, playing in Denys Arcand's The Reign of Beauty, shooting with Moroccan director Tala Hadid's The Narrow Frame of Midnight, starring in Arnaud Sélignac's Arletty, in the Finnish film Two Nights till Morning, as well as Wim Wenders' s film Everything Will Be Fine.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: IT