Isabelle Adjani

French actress and international film star; first accepted by Comedie-Francaise at 15 due to her extraordinary talent. Beautiful, high strung, neurotic. She gained rave reviews in 1975 for the film "The Story of Adele H." Her first Hollywood attempt was disastrous; she played in the flop film "Ishtar," 1987. However she won excellent reviews for the title role of "Camille Claudel."

The daughter of a German mom and Algerian-Turkish dad, she became the unmarried mother of a son, Barnabe, in 1979, with Bruno Nuytten, who directed her opposite Gerard Depardieu in "Claudel". She met Daniel Day-Lewis in 1989 and moved in with him in London for two years, then continued an intermittent relationship. Their son, Gabriel Kane, was born early April, 1995 in New York. Adjani won her fourth Caesar Award (equivalent of the Oscars) for "Queen Margot" in 1995.

Adjani's mixed ethnic background and public criticism of the French National Front's xenophobia have made her the target of various French right-wing groups, which in a 1986 defamation campaign had momentarily convinced France that Isabelle had died of Aids. Later she incurred the wrath of the Muslim world after reading from "The Satanic Verses" at the 1989 Césars and generally criticizing Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria.