Early life and career
Binoche was born in Paris, the daughter of Jean-Marie Binoche, a director, actor, and sculptor, and Monique Stalens, a teacher, director, and actress.Binoche`s mother is of Polish descent, and her maternal grandparents were imprisoned at Auschwitz because they were intellectuals. Binoche also has French, Flemish, Brazilian and Moroccan ancestry. Her parents divorced when she was four and Binoche, with her sister Marion, was sent to a boarding school.[8]

Binoche began acting in amateur stage productions, and at 17 directed and starred in a student production of the Eugène Ionesco play, Exit the King. The next year, she studied acting at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts of Paris (CNSAD). She found an agent through a friend and joined a theatre troupe in which she toured France, Belgium and Switzerland under the pseudonym of "Juliette Adrienne".

After quiting the CNSAD, she began acting lessons with famed coach Vera Gregh. Following in her mother`s footsteps, she became a stage actress, occasionally taking small parts in French feature films.[8] Her first screen role was a small part in the 1983 television film Dorothée, danseuse de corde by Jacques Fensten, which was followed by a similarly small role in the provincial television film Fort bloque by Pierrick Guinnard. After Binoche secured her first big screen appearance with a small supporting role in Pascal Kané`s Algeria-themed Liberty Belle, she decided to pursue a career in cinema.

1984 to 1991
Binoche`s early films saw her firmly established as a French star of some renown.[8] The recurring themes of these films were of contemporary young women exploring their lives and their sexuality. Small roles in Les Nanas ([984) and Adieu blaireau (1985) led to more significant exposure in Jean-Luc Godard`s Je vous salue, Marie and Jacques Doillon`s La Vie de Famille which cast her as the teenage stepdaughter of Sami Frey`s character. This film was to set the theme and tone of the early career.

In 1985, Binoche secured the lead role in André Téchiné`s Rendez-vous. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival that year, winning Best Director. In 1986, Binoche was nominated for her first César Award for Best Actress for the film. Binoche`s next film was a role in Mon beau-frère a tué ma soeur by Jacques Rouffio, which was a critical and commercial failure. Later that year, she starred opposite Michel Piccoli in Léos Carax`s Mauvais Sang. This film, however, was a critical and commercial success, leading to Binoche`s second César Award nomination. In August 1986, she portrayed Tereza in Philip Kaufman`s The Unbearable Lightness of Being based on the Milan Kundera novel. This was Binoche`s first English language role and was a worldwide success with critics and audiences alike. After this success, Binoche decided to return to France rather than pursue an international career.

In 1988, she filmed the lead in Pierre Pradinas`s Un tour de manège, a little-seen French film. Later that year she began work on Léos Carax`s Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. The film was beset by problems and took three years to complete. When it was released in 1991, The Lovers on the Bridge was a critical success. Binoche won a European Film Award for best actress as well as her third César Award nomination.

1992 to 2000

Following the long shoot of Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, Binoche relocated to London for the 1992 productions of Emily Brontë`s