Charlotte Rampling
Charlotte Rampling | |
---|---|
![]() Rampling at the 2009 Venice Film Festival | |
Born | Tessa Charlotte Rampling 5 February 1946 |
Alma mater | Jeanne d'Arc Académie pour Jeunes Filles St. Hilda's School, Bushey |
Occupation | Actress |
Years active | 1965–present |
Spouse(s) | Bryan Southcombe (1972–1976, divorced) Jean Michel Jarre (1978–1998, divorced) Jean-Noël Tassez (engaged since 1998) |
Children | Barnaby Southcombe David Jarre Émilie Jarre (stepdaughter) |
Parent(s) | Godfrey Rampling Isabel Anne Gurteen |
Charlotte Rampling, OBE (born Tessa Charlotte Rampling, 5 February 1946), is an English actress. In a career spanning almost fifty years (1965–2014), she has appeared in English language, French and Italian cinema.
Rampling's film career began in 1965. Her films include Georgy Girl (1966), Visconti's The Damned (1969), The Night Porter (1974), Farewell My Lovely (1975), Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980), Sidney Lumet's The Verdict (1982), Angel Heart (1987), The Duchess (2008) and Fred Schepisi's The Eye of the Storm (2011).
She has been nominated four times for a Cesar Award, for On ne meurt que 2 fois (1985), Sous le sable (2000), Swimming Pool (2003) and Lemming (2005) and received an Honorary Cesar in 2001. She was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2001 and received France's Legion of Honour in 2002.
She was married for twenty years to the French composer, Jean-Michel Jarre.
Early life
Rampling was born in Sturmer, Essex, the daughter of Isabel Anne (née Gurteen), a painter, and Godfrey Rampling, an Olympic gold medalist and army officer.[1] She attended Jeanne d'Arc Académie pour Jeunes Filles in Versailles and St. Hilda's School, a boarding school in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England. She had one sister, Sarah, who committed suicide in 1966 at the age of 23.[2]
Career
After beginning her career at age 17 in a commercial role and as a model, Rampling's first screen appearance was uncredited as a water skier in Richard Lester's film The Knack ...and How to Get It in 1965, which was followed a year later by the role of Meredith in the film Georgy Girl.
In 1967 Charlotte played the gunfighter Hana Wilde in "The Superlative Seven", an episode of The Avengers.[3] After this, her acting career blossomed 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."[4]
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 co-star Dirk Bogarde called it, became her trademark.[5] In 1974's The Night Porter she portrayed a former concentration camp inmate who after the war meets a former camp guard with whom she had an ambiguous relationship, and their relationship resumes. Bogarde played the camp guard. In Max mon amour, she played a woman who fell in love with a chimpanzee.
Rampling gained recognition from American audiences in a remake of Raymond Chandler's detective story Farewell, My Lovely (1975) and later with Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980) and particularly in The Verdict (1982), an acclaimed drama directed by Sidney Lumet that starred Paul Newman.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/Charlotte_Rampling_Cannes_cropped.jpg/220px-Charlotte_Rampling_Cannes_cropped.jpg)
Rampling credits François Ozon with drawing her back to film in the 2000s, a period when she came to terms with the death of her eldest sister Sarah, who, after giving birth prematurely in 1966, committed suicide at 23. "I thought that after such a long time of not letting her be with me," she told The Guardian, "I would like to bring her back into my life."[5] The character she played in Ozon's Swimming Pool (2003), Sarah Morton, was named in her sister's honour. For most of Rampling's life, she would say only that her sister had died of a brain haemorrhage; when she and her father heard the news, they agreed they would never let her mother know the truth. They kept their secret until Rampling's mother died in 2001.[5]
At 59, Rampling appeared in Laurent Cantet's Heading South (Vers le Sud), a 2005 film about sexual tourism. She plays Ellen, a professor of French literature and single Englishwoman, who holidays in 1970s Haiti to get the sexual attention she does not get at home.
On her choice of roles, Rampling says, "I generally don't make films to entertain people. I choose the parts that challenge me to break through my own barriers. A need to devour, punish, humiliate or surrender seems to be a primal part of human nature, and it's certainly a big part of sex. To discover what normal means, you have to surf a tide of weirdness."[citation needed]
The actress has continued to work in sexually provocative films such as Swimming Pool and Basic Instinct 2. More recently, she portrayed the mother of Keira Knightley's character in the title role in 2008's The Duchess.
In 2002, she also recorded an album entitled Comme Une Femme. It is in both French and English, and includes parts that are spoken word as well as tracks Rampling sang.[citation needed]
Given her striking style and look, Rampling can also be seen on the cover of Vogue Magazine, Interview Magazine, Elle Magazine and CRUSHfanzine.
In 2010, she completed filming Cleanskin, a terrorist thriller starring Sean Bean, James Fox, Tuppence Middleton, Michelle Ryan and Abhin Galeya.[citation needed] The film was written, produced and directed by Hadi Hajaig.[citation needed]
In 2013, she played Dr. Evelyn Vogel in the final season of Dexter.[6]
Personal life
In 1972, Rampling married the actor and publicist Bryan Southcombe. They were widely reported to be living in a ménage à trois with a male model, Randall Laurence,[4] and had one child, Barnaby Southcombe (who is now a successful television director) before divorcing in 1976. In 1974, Rampling was quoted by the syndicated columnist Earl Wilson as saying: "There are so many misunderstandings in life. I once caused a scandal by saying I lived with two men [...] I didn't mean it in a sexual sense [...] We were just like any people sharing a flat."[7] In 1978, Rampling married the French composer Jean Michel Jarre and had a second son, magician and singer David Jarre. She also brought up stepdaughter Émilie Jarre, now a fashion designer. The marriage was publicly dissolved in 1997 when she learned from tabloid newspaper stories about Jarre's affairs with other women and had a nervous breakdown. She has been engaged to Jean-Noël Tassez, a French communications tycoon, since 1998.[8] On 6 April 2009, it was reported by The Daily Mail that Rampling had hired lawyers to try to block the publication of a biography about her written by a close friend.[9]
Filmography
References
- ^ "Charlotte Rampling Biography (1946?-)". Filmreference.com. Retrieved 2010-10-17.
- ^ Mackenzie, Suzie (16 August 2003). "A time for happiness". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 February 2014.
- ^ The Avengers Forever: Guest Actor Biography, accessed May 7, 2010
- ^ a b Sholto Byrnes (2005-03-26). "Charlotte Rampling: In from the cold". London: The Independent. Retrieved 2006-08-12.
- ^ a b c "Good Charlotte". The Age. Melbourne. 2003-10-04.
- ^ http://www.cinemablend.com/television/Dexter-Casts-Charlotte-Rampling-Season-8-51768.html
- ^ Earl Wilson, An Explanation of Streaking. The Post-Register, Idaho Falls, Monday, March 18, 1974, p.10
- ^
Byrnes, Sholto (26 mar 2005). "Charlotte Rampling: In from the cold". Independent. London. p. 1. Retrieved 25 oct 2010.
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Churcher, Sharon (6 apr 2009). "Actress Charlotte Rampling 'freaks out' and tells lawyer to halt biography written by pal". Daily Mail. London. p. 1. Retrieved 25 oct 2010.
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Further reading
- Nicolaevitch, S. 2008. "Charlotte Forever". Citizen K International; 46 (Spring): 244–253.
- Marieke Boom, Dirk Bogarde, Nagisa Oshima et al.: Charlotte Rampling with compliments. Munich: Schirmer-Mosel, 1986, ISBN 3-88814-220-2
- Charlotte Rampling: with compliments; with a portrait by Dirk Bogarde. London: Quartet, 1987 ISBN 0704326426
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- Charlotte Rampling Website – a Fanpage dedicated to CR
- Charlotte Rampling at IMDb
- MacKenzie, Suzie (2003-08-16). "A time for happiness". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2006-10-23.
- "The ice queen thaws". The Sydney Morning Herald. 2006-12-22.