Agnès Jaoui

Agnès Jaoui (born 19 October 1964) is a French actress, screenwriter, film director and singer. Jaoui has won six César Awards, three Lumières Awards, and a Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Film Festival. She has received numerous other awards and nominations, including a nomination for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Jaoui was born in Antony, Hauts-de-Seine, and is of Tunisian Jewish descent. She is the daughter of Hubert Jaoui and Gyza Jaoui, who are both writers.

They moved to Paris when she was 8 years old. She started theatre when she was in high school at the Lycée Henri-IV in Paris. She entered the Cours Florent when she was 15. Patrice Chéreau, director of the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre where she began attending drama classes in 1984, gave her a role in the film Hôtel de France in 1987. That same year, she appeared in Harold Pinter's L'anniversaire with Jean-Pierre Bacri, who later became a faithful colleague and companion.

Jaoui and Bacri wrote the play Cuisine et dépendances, which was adapted onscreen in 1992 by Philippe Muyl. In 1993, director Alain Resnais asked them to write an adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn's 8-part play Intimate Exchanges, which became the 2-part film Smoking/No Smoking. This ironic diptych about free will and destiny won the César Award for Best Writing in 1994.