The time seems long gone when the blonde actress with the radiant face could be sent back to her period of pure comedy, ten years ago, or even to her debut as a TV host.

On Friday, it was in front of stars as well-known as Juliette Binoche or Fanny Ardant that the Franco-Belgian won the César for best actress, for her role in "Revoir Paris".

A trophy, for which she had already been nominated four times, and which comes after two intense years, where she captured all the light.

In the film, Virginie Efira plays Mia, a Parisian who cannot overcome the trauma of an attack in a Parisian brasserie.

Signed Alice Winocour, the film was one of the first to evoke in a quasi-direct way the attacks of 2015 in Paris, and offers him a role on the wire, while restraint.

His ability to immerse himself in characters as diverse as they are striking has allowed him to shine in a few months both against Tahar Rahim in "Don Juan", and Roschdy Zem in "The Children of Others" by Rebecca Zlotowski. , where she plays a stepmother trying to find her place in a blended family.

She was just as convincing in a role of pure composition, offered by the Dutchman Paul Verhoeven ("Total Recall", "Basic Instinct", "Black Book"), that of "Benedetta", a hallucinated lesbian nun in the Italy of the Seventeenth century.

A role written to make the buzz, which shone the spotlight on her at Cannes, where she then officiated, last year, as mistress of ceremonies.

She was also a member of the jury for the 78th edition of the Venice Film Festival, chaired by South Korean Bong Joon-ho.

comedies

In addition to this foray outside the Franco-Belgian borders, her last public success remains "Adieu les Cons" (2020) by Albert Dupontel, a film with the seven Césars where she plays Suze, condemned by an incurable disease, who seeks to find the child. that she had been a teenager and entrusted to social services.

She infuses it with humor, seriousness, capsizing and hardness, passing seemingly effortlessly from one state to another.

Virginie Efira wins the César for best actress for "Revoir Paris" during the César at the Olympia in Paris on February 24, 2023 © BERTRAND GUAY / AFP

The role will not have confused its audience: before the turn towards tragedy in recent years, the trajectory of Virginie Efira has long been associated with comedies, such as "20 years apart" (2013).

A way to set foot in the cinema after his years on Belgian TV, then French, on M6, which entrusted him with several programs in the 2000s, including "Nouvelle Star".

The switch to auteur cinema dates from 2016, and the role offered to him by director Justine Triet in "Victoria".

Efira will quickly become one of the muses of auteur cinema: borderline sports coach in the comedy "Le grand Bain" by Gilles Lellouche, humiliated and loving mother in "Un amour impossible" by Catherine Corsini (2018) or solitary cop in "Police" by Anne Fontaine (2020).

His popularity is also due to a displayed simplicity, his frank and direct air carried by a sonorous laugh.

Mother of a little girl and partner of actor Niels Schneider, Virgine Efira was born in Belgium in May 1977.

She quickly abandoned her studies and started hosting TV shows for teenagers in Belgium.

Asked last year by AFP, she confided that she had long withdrawn behind "a smile, like politeness, like modesty" to hide "a lack of self-confidence".

The models of the one who, as a teenager, swore only by "Pretty Woman"?

Actors of American comedies like Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler, who "have this ability to show the complexity of the world by making people laugh", she explained again.

© 2023 AFP