Editing Irène Jacob (section)

==Career==
In Paris, the 21-year-old drama student obtained her first film role in the [[Louis Malle]] film ''[[Au revoir les enfants]]'' (1987), playing the part of a piano teacher. She followed her film debut with several French movies—mostly minor roles—over the next four years.

Polish film director [[Krzysztof Kieślowski]] cast her in the lead role of his film ''[[The Double Life of Veronique]]'' (1991), the allegorical story of two young women, one in Poland and the other in France, both of whom are played by Jacob. For her performance, Jacob won the [[Best Actress Award (Cannes Film Festival)|Best Actress award]] at the [[Cannes Film Festival]].<ref>''Biography Base''. "Irene Jacob Biography" Retrieved on 13 December 2007.</ref>

From 1992 to 1993, despite numerous offers from Hollywood that came in the wake of her success, including the lead role in ''[[Indecent Proposal]]'', Jacob focused on smaller French films.

Jacob gained international acclaim as the protagonist in Kieślowski's ''[[Three Colours: Red]]'' (1994), which received three [[Academy Award]] nominations for Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Screenplay. The film was also named Best Film or Best Foreign Film by the National Board of Review, New York Film Critics Circle Awards, National Society of Film Critics Awards, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards. It received [[César Award]] nominations for Best Film, Best Actor (Jean-Louis Trintignant), Best Actress (Irène Jacob), Best Director (Krzysztof Kieślowski), Best Writing (Krzysztof Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz). ''[[The New York Times]]'' included the film in its list of "The Best 1000 Movies Ever Made."<ref name="Flint"/><ref>''Biography Base''</ref>
[[File:Irene Jacob Cannes.jpg|thumb|left|Irène Jacob at the [[1991 Cannes Film Festival]].]]
Naturally an introvert, Jacob has the remarkable ability to express the emotional turmoil of her characters with very few words. This was very evident in her performance in ''Three Colours: Red'', the third part of Kieślowski's trilogy. Jacob described her unique experience working with the Polish film director:<ref>{{cite news | url=http://film.guardian.co.uk/Feature_Story/interview/0,,220664,00.html | title=From arthouse to funhouse | newspaper=The Observer | author=Akin Ojumu | date=14 May 2000 | access-date=15 September 2007}}</ref>

{{blockquote|The camera was really like a microscope. Krzysztof was always very close and very precise in his directions. It was not something he talked about beforehand; he would only work on the set. He liked to rehearse just before a take, if at all. | Irène Jacob | The Guardian}}

Her performance in ''Three Colours: Red'' gained huge international recognition, bringing further offers from major American motion-picture studios. Jacob retreated from public attention and took nine months off, spending most of her time reading Tolstoy, Balzac, Singer, and several autobiographies.<ref name="McKenna"/>

From 1995 to 1999, Jacob made a series of American and European films that met with varying degrees of commercial and critical success. In 1995, she appeared in six films, including ''[[Victory (1995 film)|Victory]]'', with [[Willem Dafoe]] and [[Sam Neill]]; [[Michelangelo Antonioni]]'s ''[[Beyond the Clouds (1995 film)|Beyond the Clouds]]''; and Oliver Parker's adaptation of [[William Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Othello (1995 film)|Othello]]'', in which Jacob spoke all of her lines in English for the first time on film.<ref name="Flint"/> In the following years, she made several moderately successful American films, including ''[[Incognito (1997 film)|Incognito]]'' (1997); ''[[U.S. Marshals (film)|U.S. Marshals]]'' (1998), starring opposite [[Wesley Snipes]] and [[Tommy Lee Jones]]; ''[[The Big Brass Ring]]'' (1999), with [[William Hurt]]; and ''[[History Is Made at Night (1999 film)|Spy Games]]'' (1999), with [[Bill Pullman]] and [[Bruno Kirby]].

Beginning in 2000, Jacob's film career slowed down, and after a series of independent, mostly European films, she revived her theatre career. In 2000, she played the title character in ''Madame Melville'' opposite [[Macaulay Culkin]] in London's [[West End theatre|West End]]. In 2016, she began appearing as a featured character in Season 3 of the [[Showtime (TV network)|Showtime]] series ''[[The Affair (TV series)|The Affair]]''.

In August 2018, Jacob appeared at the [[Edinburgh International Festival|Edinburgh Festival]] in a one-hour dramatization of the novella ''La Maladie de la mort ([[The Malady of Death]])'' by [[Marguerite Duras]]. Jacob played the role of the unseen narrator.<ref>{{cite news|last=Miller|first=Phil|url=http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts_ents/16413280.irene-jacob-on-la-maladie-de-la-mort-acting-on-stage-and-screen-and-advice-from-krzystof-kieslowski/|title=Irene Jacob: On La Maladie de la Mort, acting on stage and screen, and advice from Krzystof Kieslowski|work=Sunday Herald|location=Glasgow|date=12 August 2018|access-date=12 August 2018}}</ref>

Jacob is author of the book ''Big Bang'' published in 2019.<ref name="Jacob2019">{{cite book|author=Irène Jacob|title=Big Bang|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q1K6DwAAQBAJ|date=6 November 2019|publisher=Albin Michel|isbn=978-2-226-44718-0}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Fiction, in theory|url=https://cerncourier.com/a/fiction-in-theory/|last=Gillies|first=James|date=31 March 2020|website=CERN Courier|language=en-GB|access-date=6 May 2020}}</ref>