Sara Forestier

The urgency of an unfiltered voice

Sara Forestier doesn't ask for permission to step into the frame. At the 2005 César Awards, she took the stage with the energy of someone who had just stepped off a bus in a Paris suburb. She was 18 years old and had just won the award for Most Promising Actress for L’Esquive.

Abdellatif Kechiche discovered her at a massive casting call, where she stood out for not trying to seem like a polished actress. The director was looking for a Lydia who spoke fast and carried the urgency of the suburbs. It was the public's first encounter with an actress who systematically rejects artifice.

No one expected a middle-class teenager to pick up the slang of the working-class suburbs so well.

But her career didn't stop at the cliché of the tough girl from the suburbs. Forestier began taking on projects where her petite frame contrasted with a volcanic presence. In 2006, she worked with Jeff Jaffe on Asterix and the Vikings, and shortly after she was directed by Tom Tykwer in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.

Before turning twenty-five, she had already shown that her method was not having a method. She throws herself into her characters with an almost violent emotional exposure that sometimes makes the more traditional French film industry uneasy. Because Forestier isn't looking to look pretty on screen.

The Body as a Political Tool

In 2010, she landed the role that changed her status in European cinema. In Le Nom des gens, she played Bahia Benmahmoud, a left-wing activist who uses sex as a political weapon to win over conservative men. It's a biting comedy in which she appears nude for much of the runtime with astonishing naturalness.

She won her second César, this time for Best Actress in a Leading Role, beating heavyweight names such as Kristin Scott Thomas. French critics noted that her performance avoided sensationalism to focus on ideological freedom. And the gamble paid off.

From that moment on, she began choosing scripts with denser dramatic weight. In 2013, she starred in Suzanne, a drama in which she plays a woman who abandons her family for a gangster. For this shoot, Forestier chose to go without makeup and neglect her personal hygiene so the character's exhaustion would feel real.

The industry started calling her difficult, but she preferred the term committed.

In 2017, she took the definitive leap, writing, directing and starring in M. It was a personal project that took years to get off the ground because it deals with stuttering and the impossible communication between two broken people. The film won the critics' prize at Venice that same year.

The resistance to makeup

Forestier is in an open war against the aesthetic tyranny of the red carpet. At several Cannes Film Festivals, she has shown up with a bare face and unstyled hair. She says that if men can go natural, she has that same fundamental right.

This stance has cost her some advertising contracts with cosmetics brands. But she doesn't mind, because she'd rather directors hire her for her ability to convey truth than for her photogenic looks. So she keeps working with the best authors in contemporary French cinema.

In 2019, she worked on Roubaix, une lumière directed by Arnaud Desplechin. In this film, she plays an alcoholic woman caught up in a sordid crime. Her performance was described as raw by the specialized press at the Cannes Film Festival, where the movie competed for the Palme d'Or.

She has no interest in Hollywood blockbusters.

During 2023, she focused on filming the historical series Filles du feu, in which she plays a woman accused of witchcraft in the 17th century. It was a physically demanding role that required months of preparation in harsh rural settings. In 2024, she premiered Trois amies, directed by Emmanuel Mouret.

The final budget for this latest production was set at 5.4 million euros, and filming wrapped in seven weeks in the city of Lyon.