Adèle Haenel born 11 February 1989 is a French actress. She is the recipient of several accolades, including two César Awards from seven nominations and one Lumières Award from two nominations.
Haenel began her career as a child actress, making her film debut with Les Diables (2002) at the age of 12, and quickly rose to prominence in the French entertainment industry as a teenager. She received her first César Award nomination for her performance in Water Lilies (2007), which also marked the beginning of her long professional and personal relationship with director Céline Sciamma. In 2014, Haenel received her first César Award for her supporting role in Suzanne, and in 2015 won the César Award for Best Actress for Love at First Fight. She continued to garner recognition for her performances in BPM (Beats per Minute) (2017), The Trouble with You (2018) and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019).
Early life
Haenel was born on 11 February 1989 in Paris. Her mother is a teacher and her father is a translator. She grew up in Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis in what she described as “a very left-wing, artistic neighborhood”. She has Austrian heritage through her father and speaks some German. Haenel started acting at the age of 5 and was involved in local theatre. As a child, Haenel would mimic cartoon characters, particularly the characters of Tex Avery.
Haenel studied economics and social sciences at the Lycée Montaigne. She had planned to attend HEC Paris and took a preparatory course, but ultimately failed the entrance exam. Haenel continued her studies in economics and sociology, eventually receiving a master’s degree. She also pursued studies in physics and marine biology.
Career
Haenel made her film debut in 2002 at the age of 12, playing an autistic girl in the Christophe Ruggia film Les Diables. She had been chosen for the lead role after accompanying her brother to the audition. After Les Diables, Haenel took a five-year break from acting. In 2007, she was persuaded by casting director Christel Baras (who had cast her in her film debut) to resume her film career, taking up the part of a synchronised swimmer in Céline Sciamma’s debut feature Water Lilies. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times highlighted Haenel’s performance in an otherwise mixed review of the film, recognizing her as having “the makings of a real star”. For her role in the film, Haenel was nominated for the César Award for Most Promising Actress in 2008. In 2012, she was nominated in the same category for House of Tolerance (2011), a period film directed by Bertrand Bonello, in which she played a prostitute at an upscale Parisian brothel at the turn of the twentieth century. She also received the Lumières Award for Most Promising Actress along with her co-stars Céline Sallette and Alice Barnole.
Haenel in 2014, receiving her first César Award for Suzanne
Haenel played one of the two sisters in Katell Quillévéré’s Suzanne (2013), for which she received the César Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 2014, Haenel starred in the Thomas Cailley romantic comedy Love at First Fight as Madeleine, a graduate-school dropout and survivalist. She won the César Award for Best Actress for her performance. In the same year, Haenel co-starred with Catherine Deneuve in André Téchiné’s crime drama In the Name of My Daughter, playing the daughter of a casino owner. Writing for The Village Voice, Melissa Anderson compared her performance to that of Isabelle Adjani’s in the 1970s and ’80s, and declared her a worthy successor to Deneuve in French cinema. For her roles in both films, Hanael received a Best Actress nomination at the 20th Lumières Awards.
In 2016 Haenel made her German language debut in the film The Bloom of Yesterday playing the French descendant of German Holocaust survivors.
In the 2017 Robin Campillo film BPM (Beats per Minute), Haenel portrayed Sophie, a headstrong HIV/AIDS activist of the Paris chapter of ACT UP. She received a nomination for the César Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.
Haenel starred in the 2018 Pierre Salvadori crime comedy The Trouble with You, playing a widowed detective based on the French Riviera. David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter noted her performance as evoking the “classic screwball heroine”, a departure from her usually more serious roles, and complimented her on the “grace and buoyancy” she brought to the character. She was again nominated for the César Award for Best Actress.
In 2019, Haenel appeared in three films which played at the Cannes Film Festival: Quentin Dupieux’s Deerskin, Aude Léa Rapin’s Heroes Don’t Die, and Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. In Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Haenel portrayed Héloïse, a young aristocrat in 18th-century Brittany who is to be married off to a nobleman from Milan. The New Yorker’s Richard Brody took note of her chemistry with co-star Noémie Merlant and complimented the actresses for being “relentlessly graceful, endowed with physical aplomb, contemplative insight, and strong emotion”. A. O. Scott of The New York Times considered Haenel’s performance worthy of an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, and Bilge Ebiri of Vulture described the climax of the film (which features Haenel) as “one of the finest pieces of acting and one of the most moving images I’ve seen in eons.” Haenel was nominated for the César Award for Best Actress for her performance, her seventh César nomination.
Personal life
In 2014, Haenel came out as a lesbian during her César award acceptance speech and acknowledged her relationship with director Céline Sciamma, whom she met on the set of Water Lilies. The couple amicably split a few years later and before they began work on Portrait of a Lady on Fire. In 2018, she was briefly in a relationship with musician and singer Julia Lanoë from the band Sexy Sushi.
Haenel identifies as a feminist. She is a prominent face of France’s #MeToo movement, and was the first prominent actress to speak publicly about abuse within the French film industry. In a November 2019 Mediapart interview, Haenel accused director Christophe Ruggia of sexually harassing her from the time she was 12 to 15 after casting her in his film Les Diables. Following the experience, she considered abandoning acting altogether. Haenel’s account was backed up by many people who had worked on the film and noted Ruggia’s inappropriate behaviour towards her, along with letters he had written her at the time proclaiming his love for her. As a result Ruggia was expelled from the Société des réalisateurs de films, the guild for French directors. Though Haenel had explicitly chosen not to go to the police with her accusations, citing the justice system as “usually condemning so few sexual offenders” and “only one rape out of a hundred” and stating that “the justice ignores us, we ignore the justice”, the publicity garnered by her interviews about the abuse led the Paris prosecutor’s office to announce they were investigating Ruggia. Haenel later changed her mind about working with the police and officially filed a complaint against Ruggia in late November 2019. In January 2020, the police officially charged Ruggia with sexual aggression against a minor by a person of authority and sexual harassment.
On 28 February 2020, Haenel, along with Noémie Merlant, Céline Sciamma and Aïssa Maïga, walked out of the 45th César Awards ceremony after Roman Polanski, who was convicted of raping 13-year old Samantha Geimer, won the award for Best Director for his film An Officer and a Spy. As Haenel left, she waved her fist and shouted “La honte!” (“Shame!”), and after exiting the auditorium, she was filmed clapping sarcastically and shouting “Bravo la pédophilie!” (“Bravo, paedophilia!”).
Filmography
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | Les Diables | Chloé | |
| 2007 | Water Lilies | Floriane | |
| 2009 | Déchaînées | Lucie | TV movie |
| 2010 | Adieu Molitor | La copine de Paulin | Short film |
| 2010 | Les Grandes Forêts | Lise | Short film |
| 2010 | Pauline | Short film | |
| 2011 | Iris in Bloom | Isabelle | |
| 2011 | House of Tolerance | Léa | |
| 2011 | Heat Wave | Amélie | |
| 2011 | Les Enfantants de la Nuit | Heriette | Short film |
| 2011 | Goldman | Jeanne | TV movie |
| 2012 | Folks | Short film | |
| 2012 | Alyah | Jeanne | |
| 2012 | Three Worlds | Marion Testard | |
| 2012 | La Mouette | Macha | TV movie |
| 2013 | Suzanne | Maria | |
| 2014 | Love at First Fight | Madeleine | |
| 2014 | In the Name of My Daughter | Agnès Le Roux | |
| 2015 | The Forbidden Room | The Mute Invalid | |
| 2015 | Les Ogres | Mona | |
| 2016 | The Unknown Girl | Jenny | |
| 2016 | Nocturama | Girl with a bike | |
| 2016 | Orphan | Renée | |
| 2016 | Seances | ||
| 2016 | The Bloom of Yesterday | Zazie | |
| 2017 | BPM (Beats per Minute) | Sophie | |
| 2018 | The Trouble With You | Yvonne | |
| 2018 | One Nation, One King | Françoise | |
| 2019 | Portrait of a Lady on Fire | Héloïse | |
| 2019 | Deerskin | Denise | |
| 2019 | Heroes Don’t Die | Alice |
Theatre
| Year | Production | Director | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | The Seagull | Arthur Nauzyciel | Festival d’Avignon |
| 2013 | Le Moche / Voir Clair / Perplexe | Maïa Sandoz | Théâtre La Générale, Paris |
| 2016 | Old Times | Benoît Giros | Théâtre de l’Atelier |
| 2016 | The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas | Maïa Sandoz | CDN d’Orléans |
| 2018 | Zaï Zaï Zaï Zaï | Paul Moulin | Ferme du Buisson |
Awards and nominations
| Year | Award | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | César Awards | Most Promising Actress | Water Lilies | Nominated | |
| 2012 | Berlin International Film Festival | Shooting Stars Award | N/A | Won | |
| Lumières Awards | Most Promising Actress | House of Tolerance | Won | ||
| César Awards | Most Promising Actress | Nominated | |||
| 2014 | César Awards | Best Supporting Actress | Suzanne | Won | |
| Prix Suzanne Bianchetti | N/A | N/A | Won | ||
| 2015 | César Awards | Best Actress | Love at First Fight | Won | |
| Cairo International Film Festival | Best Actress | Won | |||
| Lumières Awards | Best Actress | Nominated | |||
| Best Actress | In the Name of My Daughter | Nominated | |||
| Prix Romy Schneider | N/A | N/A | Won | ||
| Globes de Cristal Awards | Best Actress | Love at First Fight | Nominated | ||
| 2016 | Festival International du Film Francophone de Namur | Best Actress | Orphan | Won | |
| 2018 | César Awards | Best Supporting Actress | BPM (Beats per Minute) | Nominated | |
| 2019 | César Awards | Best Actress | The Trouble with You | Nominated | |
| Globe de Cristal Awards | Best Actress – Comedy | Nominated | |||
| European Film Awards | Best Actress | Portrait of a Lady on Fire | Nominated | ||
| IndieWire Critics Poll | Best Actress | 10th Place | |||
| Best Supporting Actress | 13th Place | ||||
| Austin Film Critics Association | Best Supporting Actress | Nominated | |||
| 2020 | César Awards | Best Actress | Nominated |