Julie Delpy has had a remarkable, multifaceted film career. An actor, director, producer, screenwriter, and film composer, she has starred in such popular and critically acclaimed movies as Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight) and Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors trilogy (Blue, White, and Red). In 2007, she wrote and directed 2 Days in Paris, followed up five years later by its sequel, 2 Days in New York. Delpy has received multiple accolades for her work as an actor and writer, including two Academy Award nominations and three César nominations (the César is the highest film honor in her native France). And yet: she is not interested in celebrity or in playing the fame game. As she told the Guardian, “Hollywood hates me — but I don’t care.”
Delpy’s colorfully eccentric parents (“free spirits”) worked in French experimental theater in the 1960s — but in fact her father loved mainstream movies, naming his daughter after British actress and Swinging Sixties icon Julie Christie. Delpy describes her parents as intellectuals and feminists, and she herself has frequently spoken out about sexism and other obstacles she has experienced as a woman in Hollywood.
“There’s no reason why anyone should be scared of women filmmakers anymore,” she told IndieWire shortly before the premiere of her 2019 film My Zoe, which she wrote and directed. “I think that time is gone hopefully. I think it’s really happening. It took a little bit to kick in.”
