Bérénice Marlohe
One enormous landmark, then a scattering of much smaller films: Marlohe has the career shape the industry prefers not to discuss. Before Skyfall the French actress had been working in French television, with a recurring role in the medical drama Equipe medicale d'urgence in 2010 and an uncredited appearance in Happiness Never Comes Alone.
Then came Severine, the anti-heroine of the twenty third James Bond film. What she does with the part is the reason it is still discussed: she plays glamour as something the woman is performing under duress rather than something she owns, so the flirtation and the fear arrive in the same line. That is a smarter reading than the role as written required.
The work since has been eclectic rather than escalating. She is Zoey in Song to Song, Arielle Pierpont in 5 to 7, Nadia in the science fiction thriller Revolt, Abby Vos in Kill Switch, and Beatrice in the American comedy miniseries The Spoils Before Dying. She has also been a brand ambassador for Omega. Small filmography, one very large credit, and a performance in it better than the writing deserved.
Movies (6)
TV (1)
Where to start with Bérénice Marlohe
Skip nothing: Skyfall is the film to watch and the only one where the material rises to meet her. Watch what she does with hands and eyeline in her first scene rather than with dialogue.
After that, 5 to 7 is the most rewarding, a small New York romance that lets her play someone with an interior life instead of a function, and Song to Song is the most ambitious thing she has appeared in, though it is a film that treats every performer as texture.
Kill Switch and Revolt are low-budget science fiction, watchable if you like the genre and thin if you do not, and The Spoils Before Dying is the comic register nobody expected from her. Start and end with the Bond film if you are only doing one.