The cult of Isabelle Huppert: the consistent brilliance of a truly versatile star
When asked her guiltiest pleasure during an interview with the Guardian, French actor Isabelle Huppert responded with a sentence that would subsequently be screenshotted and used as a meme in corners of the internet with a penchant for good cinema: “Imagining myself as a sadistic and manipulative murderer.” The star has routinely played complex and unhinged characters – appearing to great acclaim in intense movies like The Piano Teacher, Malina, and Elle – so her guilty pleasure didn’t exactly come as a surprise to fans.
Huppert’s interest in sadistic and perverted characters has made her one of the most unforgettable actors of her generation. She approaches each role with distinctive fearlessness, and she’s not afraid to be cold and stubborn, words that have also been used to describe the actor herself. Notoriously hard to interview, Huppert’s reputation in the public eye has been one as complex as her characters – she often refuses to open up, but other times she’ll slip in a comment, like in the Guardian interview mentioned above, that’ll reveal a sly sense of humour.
In a different interview with the publication, she revealed, “You’d be quite amazed at how much you can keep quiet. I think my only real vice… I suppose I can tell you this…My only real vice is broccoli.” Huppert’s unusual sense of humour, her penchant for privacy, and her incredible film performances have allowed her to become somewhat of a cult figure.
Her fans generally regard her as one of the greatest actors of all time, rivalling contemporaries from across the globe like Meryl Streep or Viola Davis. A large number of fan edits, appreciation posts, and memes frequently appear on the internet from Huppert’s dedicated followers—there’s no messing about here.
It’s not hard to see why people love Huppert. She’s the kind of actor who spawns headlines like ‘Watch Greta star Isabelle Huppert sip wine, mutilate adorable stuffed animals’ (Entertainment Weekly) and tells interviewers, “If we were in a psychiatric hospital, I would be with schizophrenics and [Isabelle Adjani] with paranoids.” Her humour is also apparent in many of the more comedic film roles she takes on, proving her versatility as a star who can do serious and deranged as well as cruel and conniving.
“I’m more Cruella than Snow White,” she told the Los Angeles Times, suggesting that her favourite kind of comedic character is one with flamboyance and cruelty at their core.
Huppert’s best roles are the ones where she pushes herself into a complicated and troublesome world, whether she’s playing prostitutes, lonely piano teachers with sadistic desires, murderers, or revenge-seekers. She brings life to the screen without fail, championing subtle expressions or vulnerability, sometimes leaning fully into chaos and other times mastering an icy restraint. From The Lacemaker and Loulou to La Ceremonie and White Material, Huppert has hardly made a misstep, which is a testament to her consistency and versatility.
The actor holds several records too, with 16 Cesar nominations to her name (winning two), while 29 of her movies have been screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Few actors can compare to the acclaim that Huppert has achieved over her career, which began in 1971 with the made-for-television film Le Prussien.
Her love for cinema is clear (you only have to watch her Criterion closet videos), and it has propelled her to work with interesting filmmakers like Claude Chabrol, Claire Denis, Jean-Luc Godard, and Michael Haneke. Her unique reputation as someone with clear personal boundaries, a bizarre sense of humour, and the ability to lean into her neuroses has allowed her to become a cult icon, loved by young movie fans and long-standing cinephiles alike.
