Isabelle Adjani's disconcerting career, between flashes of brilliance and eclipses

Actresses and actors sometimes lose their taste for the profession, such as Brigitte Bardot, who retired at just 40. Greta Garbo (1905-1990) faded even earlier, at 36, but in the vain hope of a comeback, under the direction of Max Ophuls, Alfred Hitchcock, or Luchino Visconti. Some saw it only as a means of earning a living, for example Marlon Brando, who, from the 1980s onward, only acted with the guarantee of a large paycheck. Weariness, phobias linked to fame or age, an abundance of money, and various addictions marked the withdrawals.

There's also the specimen Isabelle Adjani. She doesn't have the linear and dense trajectory of Catherine Deneuve or Isabelle Huppert, who pile up projects like a mason piles up bricks; her career is marred by gaps and absences. Before rising again several times like a phoenix when people start to forget her. Because if her activity as an actress is a serious matter for her, she is not obsessed, at 70, by the overall work she is sculpting.

"I always thought that acting was a profession of faith before being a profession, but sometimes it also becomes a job ," she tells us. "It's a contract with the devil, this business, so we might as well make sumptuous films. But it's annoying to hear that it's the most beautiful job in the world, because that's not exactly it." There's a paradox in Adjani. She does her job "without restriction" but without making it an absolute priority.

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