Catherine Frot

Early life

Born in Paris, France, the daughter of an engineer and a mathematics teacher, Frot demonstrated comic traits and expressions at an early age. At the age of fourteen, she enrolled in the Versailles conservatory while still in school. By 1974, she began her education at the Rue Blanche school and afterwards took up full-time studies at the conservatory.

Career

In 1975, Frot appeared at the Festival d'Avignon with the Compagnie du Chapeau Rouge (Red Hat Company) which she founded with the help of others. From then on, Catherine put all her energy into theatre performances in roles such as the Présidente de Tourvel in the play Les Liaisons dangereuses in 1987. She performed in a number of classical plays such as La Cerisaie, directed by Peter Brook in 1982, and La Mouette directed by Pierre Pradinas in 1985.

In films, Frot won the César Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in 1996, for playing Yolande, 'the sweet silly wife of a provincial bully' in Cédric Klapisch's Un air de famille and was funny and moving as a wealthy, rebellious nuisance in La Dilettante (1999). In 7 ans de mariage, she played a prudish banker, wife and mother, who is drawn by her bored, sexually frustrated husband into the world of Parisian "clubs échangistes" ("wife-swapping clubs"). She is an officer of the Ordre national du Mérite.