French actress

Emmanuelle Riva (French pronunciation::​; 24 February 1927 – 27 January 2017) was a French actress, best known for her roles in the films Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and Amour (2012).

Riva was nominated for a BAFTA Award for her role in Hiroshima mon amour, and won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for Thérèse Desqueyroux (1962). For her lead role in Michael Haneke's Amour, she won a BAFTA Award and the César Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award.

Contents

• 1 Early life
• 2 Career
  • 2.1 Film
  • 2.2 Other works
• 3 Personal life
• 4 Death
• 5 Selected filmography
• 6 Bibliography
• 7 See also
• 8 References
• 9 External links

Early life

Riva was born Paulette Germaine Riva on 24 February 1927 in Cheniménil, France, the daughter of Jeanne Fernande (née Nourdin), a seamstress, and René Alfred Riva, a sign painter from Italy.

Growing up in Remiremont, Riva showed an early p*ion for acting, performing in plays at her local theatre, but worked for several years as a seamstress. After seeing an adverti*t on a local newspaper, Riva applied to an acting school in Paris.

At 26, she moved to Paris to pursue acting despite her family's objections. In 1954, she performed her first role on stage in a Paris production of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man. In 1957, Riva made her onscreen acting debut in the TV series Énigmes de l'histoire.

Career

Film

Riva was cast as one of the leads in Hiroshima mon amour (1959), a film directed by Alain Resnais and written by Marguerite Duras, in which she played a French actress having an affair with a *anese architect (Eiji Okada) in Hiroshima. Her performance was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress in 1960. She next appeared in Gillo Pontecorvo's Kapò (1960), Jean-Pierre Melville's Léon Morin, Priest (1961) and Georges Franju's Thérèse Desqueyroux (1962), for which she won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 23rd Venice International Film Festival. Riva also appeared in Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors: Blue (1993), Tonie Marshall's Venus Beauty Ins*ute (1999), Julie Delpy's Skylab (2011) and Fiona Gordon & Dominique Abel 's Lost in Paris (2016).

Emmanuelle Riva at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival

Riva starred in Michael Haneke's film Amour (2012) with Jean-Louis Trintignant, playing an elderly music teacher being cared for by her husband after a series of debilitating strokes. She won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in 2013 for her performance, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Riva traveled to the 85th Academy Awards ceremony, which was held on her 86th birthday, but Jennifer Lawrence won for Silver Linings Playbook instead. At 85, when she was nominated, Riva was the oldest ever Best Actress nominee and the second-oldest acting nominee after Gloria Stuart, who was 87 when she was nominated for *anic (1997).

Other works

Riva had an extensive theatre career in Paris. In 2001, she performed in Medea at the Festival d'Avignon. She appeared occasionally on French television. Riva returned to the Paris stage in February 2014, co-starring with Anne Consigny in the Marguerite Duras play Savannah Bay at the Théâtre de l'Atelier.

While filming Hiroshima mon amour, Riva photographed Hiroshima; a half-century later these photographs were exhibited at the Nikon Salon and issued in book form in France and *an. Riva was a published poet.

Riva's final resting place in Paris

Personal life

Riva led a private life, never married and did not have children. She had a partner, who died in 1999. Riva owned a fourth-floor walk-up apartment in the Latin Quarter of Paris, and lived there for more than half a century.

Death

Riva died from cancer on 27 January 2017 in Paris, four weeks before her 90th birthday. A memorial service was held on 4 February 2017 at Saint-Germain de Charonne church in the 20th arrondis*t of Paris; she was then buried in Charonne cemetery.

Selected filmography

Bibliography

• Riva, Emmanuelle (1975). Le Feu des miroirs (in French). Paris: Éditions Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
• Riva, Emmanuelle (1976). Juste derrière le sifflet des trains (in French). Paris: Éditions Saint-Germain-des-Prés. ISBN:2-243-00380-5.
• Riva, Emmanuelle (1982). L'otage du désir (in French). Paris: Nouvelles Éditions latines. ISBN:2-7233-0184-2.
• Riva, Emmanuelle (2008). Hiroshima 1958 (in *anese). Tokyo: Inscript. ISBN:978-4-900997-22-6.
• Riva, Emmanuelle (2009). Tu n'as rien vu à Hiroshima (in French). Paris: Gallimard. ISBN:978-2-07-012298-1.

See also

• List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees

References

External links

• Emmanuelle Riva at IMDb
• Emmanuelle Riva at NewWaveFilm.com

1968–present

• Katharine Hepburn (1968)
• Maggie Smith (1969)
• Katharine Ross (1970)
• Glenda Jackson (1971)
• Liza Minnelli (1972)
• Stéphane Audran (1973)
• Joanne Woodward (1974)
• Ellen Burstyn (1975)
• Louise Fletcher (1976)
• Diane Keaton (1977)
• Jane Fonda (1978)
• Jane Fonda (1979)
• Judy Davis (1980)
• Meryl Streep (1981)
• Katharine Hepburn (1982)
• Julie Walters (1983)
• Maggie Smith (1984)
• Peggy Ashcroft (1985)
• Maggie Smith (1986)
• Anne Bancroft (1987)
• Maggie Smith (1988)
• Pauline Collins (1989)
• Jessica Tandy (1990)
• Jodie Foster (1991)
• Emma Thompson (1992)
• Holly Hunter (1993)
• Susan Sarandon (1994)
• Emma Thompson (1995)
• Brenda Blethyn (1996)
• Judi Dench (1997)
• Cate Blanchett (1998)
• Annette Bening (1999)
• Julia Roberts (2000)
• Judi Dench (2001)
• Nicole Kidman (2002)
• Scarlett Johansson (2003)
• Imelda Staunton (2004)
• Reese Witherspoon (2005)
• Helen Mirren (2006)
• Marion Cotillard (2007)
• Kate Winslet (2008)
• Carey Mulligan (2009)
• Natalie Portman (2010)
• Meryl Streep (2011)
• Emmanuelle Riva (2012)
• Cate Blanchett (2013)
• Julianne Moore (2014)
• Brie Larson (2015)
• Emma Stone (2016)
• Frances McDormand (2017)
• Olivia Colman (2018)
• Renée Zellweger (2019)
• Frances McDormand (2020)
• Joanna Scanlan (2021)