French actress and model Eva Gaëlle Green was born on July 6, 1980, in Paris, France. Her father, Walter Green, is a dentist who appeared in the 1966 film Au hasard Balthazar (1966). Her mother, Marlène Jobert, is an actress turned children’s book writer. Eva’s mother was born in Algeria, of French, Spanish, and Sephardi Jewish heritage (during that time, Algeria was part of France), and Eva’s father is of Swedish, French, and Breton descent. She has a fraternal twin sister, Joy. Eva left French school at 17. She switched to the American School in France for one year. She left the American School and studied acting at Saint Paul Drama School in Paris for three years, then had a 10-week polishing course at the Weber Douglas Academy of dramatic Art in London. She returned to Paris as an accomplished young actress, and played on stage in several theater productions: “La Jalousie en Trois Fax” and “Turcaret”. There, she caught the eye of director Bernardo Bertolucci. Green followed a recommendation to work on her English. She studied for two months with an English coach before doing The Dreamers (2003) with Bernardo Bertolucci. During their work, Bertolucci described Green as being “so beautiful it’s indecent”.
Green won critical acclaim for her role in The Dreamers (2003). She also attracted a great deal of attention from male audiences for her full frontal nudity in several scenes of the film. After “The Dreamers”, Green’s career ascended to the level where she revealed more of her multifaceted acting talent. She played the love interest of cult French gentleman stealer Arsène Lupin (2004), opposite Romain Duris. In 2005, she co-starred, opposite Orlando Bloom and Liam Neeson, in the Kingdom of Heaven (2005), produced and directed by Ridley Scott. The film brought her a wider international exposure. She turned down the femme fatale role in The Black Dahlia (2006), which went to Hilary Swank, because she didn’t want to end up typecast as a femme fatale after her role in “The Dreamers”. Instead, Eva accepted the prestigious role of “Vesper Lynd”, one of three Bond girls, opposite Daniel Craig, in Casino Royale (2006) and became the 5th French actress to play a James Bond girl, after Claudine Auger in Thunderball (1965), Corinne Cléry in Moonraker (1979), Carole Bouquet in For Your Eyes Only (1981) and Sophie Marceau in The World Is Not Enough (1999). She achieved international recognition for the film, one of the highest-grossing Bond movies ever.
Since then, Green has starred in the films Dark Shadows (2012), 300: Rise of an Empire (2014), Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014), and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016). She also starred as Vanessa Ives in Showtime’s horror drama “Penny Dreadful” (2014)_. Her performance in the series earned her a nomination for Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards.
Since her school years, Green has been a cosmopolitan multilingual and multicultural person. Yet, since her father always lived in France with them and her mother, she and her twin sister can’t speak Swedish. She developed a wide scope of interests beyond her acting profession and became an aspiring art connoisseur and an avid museum visitor. Outside of acting, her other activities include playing and composing music, cooking at home, walking her terrier, and collecting art. She shares time between her two residencies; one is in Paris, France, and London, England.