Julie Delpy | Family
-
Julie Delpy is the only child of show business parents. Both of her parents are actors and her father is also a theater director.
Her father, Albert Delpy, grew up in Vietnam, Cambodia and West Africa where his father held administrative positions with the French colonial government. In 1960, Albert's father, whom Julie suspects was a spy, committed suicide in Ouagadougou, the capital of Upper Volta (now called Burkina Faso).
"My father was born in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City, and former capital of the French colony of Cochin China) and was raised over there. I never went there, but Vietnam is very present in my family. Not like a colonial nostalgy, because my father was a child when he lived there, but he transmitted me the love of this culture, and I dream of going there one day."
Her mother, Marie Pillet, was raised on the French-Swiss border and met Albert when she came to Paris to study acting. Both parents appear in the last minutes of "Before Sunset," playing the neighbours of Celine who prepare a community meal in a courtyard.
"I couldn't hope for better parents," Julie says. "They really raised me with a love of art, bringing me to museums and seeing things that a child wouldn't see at that age. I would see Ingmar Bergman movies when I was 9 and totally go for it. And they would bring me to see Francis Bacon's paintings, which I loved: so dark and at the same time it's so wonderful."
On the stages of Paris, Albert and Marie were involved in underground theater. "It was pretty subversive -- kind of edgy, crazy stuff like Fernando Arrabal, Copi, Ionesco. Pretty out there. Like, I would see my dad playing a woman and changing -- what is the thing women wear when they have their period? -- onstage." She blushes, laughs at herself. Then: "Oh, I shouldn't say that! I'm going to sound like I come from a family of crazy people."
"My parents are total hippie anarchists. They raised me with total freedom of thinking, total freedom of expressing myself. There's no filter between my brain and my mouth."
Both parents have acted in dozens of films but neither at the level of success that their daughter achieved at an early age.
