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She has her father’s snub nose; the gentle gaze of his mother. Anna Biolay, daughter of Benjamin Biolay and Chiara Mastroianni, will climb the steps of the Cannes Film Festival this Thursday to present the film Rosalie, by Stéphanie Di Giusto, in which she replies to her father. A great first for this young 19-year-old actress, who has nevertheless always gravitated in this world. Supported by her two parents under the sun of the Croisette, she will also be joined by her grandmother, Catherine Deneuve, an illustrious actress of French cinema, during the said competition. A Dantesque, intimidating family heritage, which this child of the ball seems ready to endorse.

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In video, Cannes 2023: climb of the steps of May 16

To prove himself

“You would have to be above ground not to realize how lucky I am to belong to this family which has passed on so many treasures to me. Culture first. But also the passion for art, music and cinema”, she declared to Madame Figaro ahead of the ceremony. But, although aware of her status as “Nepo baby”, this nickname given to the “sons and daughters of” who invest the cultural industry, Anna Biolay nurtures more than anything the desire to get rid of this golden cage, by becoming , ultimately, a first name.

Her father likes to recall it: Anna Biolay is, of course, the granddaughter of Catherine Deneuve and the Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni (The good life), but it is also that of grandparents Biolay, Jacques and Chantal, musicians living modestly in Beaujolais. “The world constantly reminds her of who she is. But she is also my daughter and my parents’ granddaughter. She is fully aware of these more provincial and more popular roots,” explained the 50-year-old singer, performer of the song. Your Legacy, written for her. Remember: “It’s not your fault, It’s your heritage (…) It’s not your fault, It’s your flesh, your blood, We’ll have to deal with it, or rather without it”.

He thus likes to extract himself from easy criticism to focus only on the acting of his daughter, cast “behind his back” he says, for Rosalie. “I immediately looked at her like the other actresses, that’s all (…) I don’t know if it’s in the genes, and I’m not talking about mine, but she has a real ease when she play comedy. It’s quite impressive to watch,” he said in an interview for TeleStarlast December.

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Truffaut Fan

An opinion shared by the actress Anne Marivin, who gave him the reply in the TV movie Life, love, right away, released in January 2023, one of Anna Biolay’s first appearances on camera. She plays Amélie, a young girl with cystic fibrosis. “Anna is an extremely sensitive, intelligent and super well-mannered actress. She arrives with such a heritage that she sometimes feels that she is disturbing. It must exist. She is made for this job. If she continues on this path, I predict a nice course for her. A course that his mother, Chiara Mastroianni, seems completely ready to accept: “Many actors hope that their children will not take this path. Not me,” she recently told us.

Where does this certain talent come from, if not from his genes? Perhaps she also owes them to her hours spent watching “everything she could” in a rich and hand-picked film library. Fan of Truffaut, special mention to her grandmother Catherine Deneuve, Anna Biolay has not without difficulty forged a strong and sharp cultural identity. His latest favorite: the film The Whaleby Darren Aronofsky, which won Brendan Fraser the Oscar for best actor in 2023.

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Bambi Music

Child of divorced parents – Benjamin Biolay and Chiara Mastroianni left in 2009 after seven years of marriage -, we then imagine the life of young Anna, wandering her fingers, every other week, in her mother’s cinematheque or the cash registers vinyl records from his father. An assiduous reader, “especially for Stefan Zweig”, she is also a great music lover, who was able to find a certain comfort in music and in her father’s first love. The one who likes to sing and who is particularly sensitive to punk, still practices under the pseudonym of Bambi.

Thus, among his idols: Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain, “free spirits and closed in on themselves”. But also Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and rappers like Tupac or The Notorious BIG, demonstrating all his eclecticism. Endowed with great sensitivity, Anna Biolay, who likes to walk in the rain, dreaming with her music, in the streets of Paris, would also be “a born singer”, insists her father. She also contributed to her album Grand Prizereleased in 2020 and widely critically acclaimed, still crediting itself as Bambi.

Hands-on, therefore, and visibly gifted, it may well be that we discover her in a few years climbing the steps of another ceremony: that of the Victoires de la Musique, perhaps, with an album to present. His legacy ?