At almost 36 years old, Noémie Merlant is one of the most prominent French actresses of the moment. Nominated for the Césars in 2017 as most promising actress for the film Heaven will waitnominated three years later in the best actress category for her role in Portrait of a Lady on Firein 2023, she won the César Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The innocent. In short, Noémie has become a sure bet in French cinema, and she is even starting to export herself. She recently starred opposite Cate Blanchett in Tarand to Kate Winslet in Lee Miller.
Noémie Merlant: from New star…
But Noémie is especially on the bill forEmmanuelleby Audrey Diwan. 50 years later, she is indeed following in the footsteps of Sylvia Kristel, the first to have played the heroine of the cult erotic novel of the same name by Emmanuelle Arsan on the big screen… A film which, upon its release (and well after), was a huge success all over the world. For this role, Noémie was preferred to Léa Seydoux, who had long been considered. But before getting there, the young woman had an astonishing career… Because before becoming an actress, she dreamed of being singer.
“It was my greatest passion. I took lessons. I even went to the Nantes Conservatory, in the Christine and the Queens class. In short, I sang from morning to night.”she told Paris Match in 2022. So much so that in 2005, she tried her luck on the show New Star which she has bitter memories of. The reason? The jury – composed of Marianne James, Dove Attia, André Manoukian and Manu Katché – who were not very nice after her performance: “At the end of my performance, they asked me where I lived. I answered Rezé. And then, they told me curtly that I could ‘go back to where I came from’. I think the sequence was cut. It couldn’t be broadcast because it was so gratuitous,” she continued. Change of direction, and of voice, Noémie becomes modelthen her father pushed her to enroll in the Cours Florent.
… At The day everything changed
Like any aspiring actress, Noémie had to initially settle for small roles in films and series (Julie Lescaut, Reserved investigations). And looking a little closer at his CV, we also note an appearance in an episode of The day everything changed. And we bet you know exactly what we’re talking about! There’s a good chance you’ve come across this fiction at least once, each episode of which is inspired by real events and presented by a lawyer. Broadcast from 2011 to 2014 on France 2012, this “series” in docu-fiction format, with the protagonists appearing on camera, is regularly rebroadcast on the NRJ group’s channels (currently Chérie 25) and is even available in its entirety on YouTube. Despite its unbearable background music, its frankly painful voice-over, and its acting… not always very brilliant, it’s a hit!
Noémie was the heroine of an episode first broadcast in August 2011 and whose title is My daughter is in love with her teacher. She played Annabelle, a 17-year-old high school student who fell in love with her English teacher (who had a wife and children, which he hadn’t told her). Which would earn him a court appearance… Noémie Merlant isn’t the only budding star to have passed through The Day Everything Changed. Finally, among the hundreds of actors and actresses who have gone through this, only one actually experienced a similar fate to her: Camille Cottin !
