Charlotte Rampling

Biography

Tessa Charlotte Rampling (born 5 February 1946) is an English actress. An icon of the Swinging Sixties, she began her career as a model. She was cast in the role of Meredith in the 1966 film Georgy Girl, which starred Lynn Redgrave. She soon began making French and Italian arthouse films, notably Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969) and Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter (1974). She went on to star in many European and English-language films, including Stardust Memories (1980), The Verdict (1982), Long Live Life (1984), and The Wings of the Dove (1997). In the 2000s, she became the muse of French director François Ozon, appearing in several of his films, notably Under the Sand (2000), Swimming Pool (2003) and Young & Beautiful (2013). On television, she is known for her role as Dr. Evelyn Vogel in Dexter (2013). In 2002, Rampling released an album of recordings in the style of cabaret, Like a Woman. In 2012 she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, both for her performance in the miniseries Restless. For her performance in the 2015 film 45 Years, she won the Berlin Film Festival Award for Best Actress, the European Film Award for Best Actress, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 2017, Rampling won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 74th Venice International Film Festival for Hannah. She received an Honorary César in 2001 and France's Legion of Honour in 2002. She was made an OBE in 2000 for her services to the arts, and received the 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award from the European Film Awards. In 2015, Rampling released her autobiography, which she wrote in French, titled Qui Je Suis. She later worked on an English translation, Who I Am, which was published in March 2017.

== Early life == Rampling was born in 1946 in Sturmer, Essex, the daughter of Isabel Anne (née Gurteen; 1918–2001), a painter, and Godfrey Rampling (1909–2009), an Olympic gold medallist runner and British Army officer. She spent most of her early life in Gibraltar, France and Spain, before she returned to the UK in 1964. She attended Académie Jeanne d'Arc in Versailles and St Hilda's School, a boarding school in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England. She had one sister, Sarah, who died by suicide in 1967, aged 23. She and Sarah had a close relationship and they had performed in a cabaret act together during their young years.

== Career ==

=== 1960s: Modelling career, starting as actress === Rampling made her stage debut at the age of 14, singing French chansons with her sister at Bernays Institute in Stanmore. She began her career as a model and first appeared in a Cadbury advertisement. She was working as a secretary when she was noticed by a casting agent in the same building. She made uncredited appearances in two films directed by Richard Lester including his first film with the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night (1964), and as a water skier in The Knack ...and How to Get It (1965). In 1965, she was cast in the role of Meredith in the film Georgy Girl and was given a role by John Boulting in the comedy Rotten to the Core. In 1967, she starred opposite Yul Brynner in the adventure film The Long Duel. She also appeared alongside Franco Nero in the Italian film Sardinia Kidnapped (Sequestro di persona) (1968), directed by Gianfranco Mingozzi. On television, Rampling played the gunfighter Hana Wilde in "The Superlative Seven", a 1967 episode of The Avengers in which she knocked out John Steed. In 1969, she starred opposite Sam Waterston in the romance-drama Three, and in 1972, she starred opposite Robert Blake in the drama Corky and portrayed Anne Boleyn in the costume drama Henry VIII and His Six Wives. After this, her career flourished and she found notable work in both English and French cinema. Despite an early flurry of success, she told The Independent: "We weren't happy. It was a nightmare, breaking the rules and all that. Everyone seemed to be having fun, but they were taking so many drugs they wouldn't know it anyway." Rampling has performed controversial roles. In 1969, in Luchino Visconti's The Damned (La Caduta degli dei), she played a young wife sent to a Nazi concentration camp. Critics praised her performance, and it cast her in a whole new image: mysterious, sensitive, and ultimately tragic. "The Look", as her co-star Dirk Bogarde called it, became her trademark.

=== 1970–early 1980s: Mature roles, Hollywood, and Italian cinema === She appeared in the cult classic Vanishing Point, in a scene deleted from the U.S. theatrical release (included in the U.K. release). Lead actor Barry Newman remarked that the scene was of aid in the allegorical lilt of the film.

In 1974's The Night Porter, in which she again appears alongside Dirk Bogarde, she plays a former concentration camp inmate who, after World War II, reunites with a former camp guard (Bogarde) with whom she had had an ambiguous, sadomasochistic relationship. Their relationship resumes, and she becomes his mistress and victim once again. In 1974, she posed nude for Playboy photographs by Helmut Newton. In 1976 she co-presented for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration Award with Anthony Hopkins at the 48th Academy Awards. In 1974, Rampling starred in John Boorman's science-fiction film Zardoz opposite Sean Connery. She also starred with Peter O'Toole in Foxtrot (1976) and with Richard Harris in Orca (1977). She gained recognition from American audiences as the leading lady in a well-received remake of Raymond Chandler's detective story Farewell, My Lovely (1975) starring Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe, and later with Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980), and in The Verdict (1982), an acclaimed drama directed by Sidney Lumet that starred Paul Newman. In 1978 director Clive Donner cast David Bowie and Rampling in a film to be called Wally, centered around Egon Schiele and his relationship with his lover Wally Neuzil, however due to absence of funding the project never materialised.

=== Middle 1980s and 1990s === Rampling starred in Claude Lelouch's 1984 film Viva la vie (Long Live Life), before going on to star in the cult-film Max mon amour (1986), and appear in the thriller Angel Heart (1987). For a decade she withdrew from the public eye due to depression. In the late 1990s, she appeared in The Wings of the Dove (1997), played Miss Havisham in a BBC television adaptation of Great Expectations (1998), and starred in the film adaptation of Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard (1999), directed by Michael Cacoyannis.. In 1997, she was a jury member at the 54th Venice International Film Festival.

=== 2000s ===