Victoire du Bois
Victoire du Bois is an actor, born 1988.
Du Bois trained the formal French way, at L'Ecole du Jeu and then the Conservatoire National Superieur d'Art Dramatique, and made her film debut in Volker Schlondorff's Calm at Sea in 2011. The conservatoire shows in the work: she is precise, cool on camera, and comfortable holding a scene without decorating it.
Two roles carried her name abroad. In Call Me by Your Name she plays Chiara, a small part in a very famous film, the sort of credit that follows an actor around out of all proportion to its size. From the Land of the Moon gave her considerably more to do. Then came Marianne, the Netflix horror series in which she plays Emma Larsimon, a novelist dragged back to the town her books came out of, and it is the fullest thing on her record: a lead in a genuinely frightening show that asks her to be abrasive, self-destructive and usually right.
She also voiced Gabrielle in I Lost My Body, which is a shrewd use of her, since the film needs a voice heard largely through an intercom to carry most of a romance. The recent credits, November, Nino and The Unknown, suggest a career being built patiently in France rather than exported.
Movies (6)
TV (1)
Where to start with Victoire du Bois
Marianne wins this easily: a single season of French horror television that is genuinely nasty, built around her performance as a writer with no interest in being anyone's hero. Watch it in French with subtitles; the dub flattens her.
I Lost My Body is the other essential, an animated film in which she builds a whole character out of voice alone. Call Me by Your Name is the famous credit and the smallest one, so go in knowing that.
From the Land of the Moon is her most conventional dramatic showcase, November places her in a large procedural ensemble where she is one strong element among many, and Nino is the recent one worth catching up with.