Marshals , and Eternity The youngest child with three older brothers, she was raised in a highly educated and intellectual family and environment: her father, Maurice Jacob , was a physicist ; her mother, a psychologist ; one brother, Francis Jacob, a musician; and her other two brothers, scientists. My family was very shy with feelings and never spoke about them, but we evolved a little bit.
I think part of the reason I was attracted to theater was because I wanted to be close to stories because they could help me relate to my family. Jacob developed an interest in performing after seeing the films of Charlie Chaplin. She made her stage debut in at the age of In Paris, the year-old drama student obtained her first film role in the Louis Malle film Au revoir les enfants , playing the part of a piano teacher.
She followed her film debut with several French moviesβmostly minor rolesβover the next four years. From to , 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. Naturally an introvert, Jacob has the remarkable ability to express the emotional turmoil of her characters with very few words.
Jacob described her unique experience working with the Polish film director: [ 10 ]. 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. 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. From to , Jacob made a series of American and European films that met with varying degrees of commercial and critical success. Beginning in , Jacob's film career slowed down, and after a series of independent, mostly European films, she revived her theatre career.
