Bérénice Bejo

A silent film gave Berenice Bejo her largest audience and her most misleading reputation. The French-Argentine actress had been working for a decade before it, including an English-language turn as Christiana in A Knight's Tale in 2001 and a very sharp comic performance as Larmina in OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies in 2006, where the joke depends on her playing everything absolutely straight opposite an idiot.

Then came The Artist in 2011 and Peppy Miller, a role performed without audible dialogue. What she does with it is not mime; it is a series of very small decisions about where to put her attention, so that the audience always knows what she has just understood. It earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress and won her the Cesar Award for Best Actress.

The better performance came two years later. In The Past she plays Marie Brisson, and the film gives her no charm to hide behind: she is often the least sympathetic person in the room, and Bejo refuses to plead for the character. It won her Best Actress at Cannes in 2013. Since then she has moved freely between registers, from the typing-contest comedy Populaire to the dinner party farce Nothing to Hide, the chilly period drama The Childhood of a Leader, Michele Rosier in Godard Mon Amour, a double role in the zombie-shoot comedy Final Cut, and a Seine full of sharks in Under Paris. She has also been cast as Alice Guy-Blache, the pioneering film director, in a six-part drama series.