The international film industry demands that French actors perform in English if they want to break out of their domestic market. Several of them have successfully made the transition.
Jean Reno, Gérard Depardieu, Jean Dujardin, Marion Cotillard, Omar Sy and others have turned a French accent into a charming asset.
Far fewer stars travel the other way, working mostly in English but capable of slipping across the cultural and linguistic border if it appeals to them to do so.
Here are some exceptions to the general monolingual rule: five British and American actors who are equally at home in French.
1. Timothée Chalamet
Timothee Chalamet is an ASSE (Saint-Etienne football club) fanKathy Hutchins/Shutterstock
The star of last year’s internationally acclaimed film Wonka, is, as his name suggests, half-French.
He grew up in New York City but spent his childhood summers at the home of his paternal grandparents in the small French town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon (Haute Loire).
He uses his French in the 2017 film Call Me By Your Name.
2. Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda has long been recognised as a film icon and has had a stellar career spanning decades.
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She performed opposite Yves Montand in Jean-Luc Godard’s Tout va Bien (1972), a French-Italian political drama, and took another French-speaking role in Stéphane Robelin’s All Together (2011).
For seven years she was married to the French director Roger Vadim.
3. Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster's breakthrough role came as a 12-year old in Taxi DriverDFree/Shutterstock
She studied at the Lycée Français in Los Angeles and became the family breadwinner as a child star.
Although she can act with ease in both English and French, she has only had few roles in the latter language, notably Moi, fleur bleue (1977).
She does her own voiceovers into French.
4. John Malkovich
Perhaps best known for Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1988), John Malkovich is of mixed Croatian, German, English, Scottish and French descent and has worked as a director in diverse languages.
He has directed stage plays in French including Good Canary (2008) for which he won a Molière award, an adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses (2012).
5. Kristin Scott Thomas
Kristin Scott Thomas at the Cannes Festival in 2017taniavolobueva/Shutterstock
Originally from England’s West Country, Kristin Scott Thomas is best known for her roles in The English Patient and Four Weddings and a Funeral (for which she dubbed her own part into French).
She began her studies at London’s Central drama school but moved to Paris when she was 19 to work as an au pair and perfect her art at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre (ENSATT). Later, she married a French doctor and brought up her children in France.
She has appeared in stage productions and films on both sides of the English Channel, and once said that she considers herself more French than British.
