Sylvette Herry (born 22 February 1950), known professionally as Miou-Miou (French: [mjumju]), is a French actress. A ten-time César Award nominee, she won the César Award for Best Actress for the 1979 film Memoirs of a French Whore. Her other films include This Sweet Sickness (1977), Entre Nous (1983), May Fools (1990), Germinal (1993), Dry Cleaning (1997) and Arrêtez-moi (2013). In her career she has worked with a number of international directors, including Michel Gondry, Bertrand Blier, Claude Berri, Jacques Deray, Patrice Leconte, Joseph Losey and Louis Malle.
Contents
Early life
Miou-Miou was born Sylvette Herry in Paris. Her stage name, Miou-Miou (a reference to the sound of a cat), was given to her by Coluche. She was raised in Paris by her mother, a greengrocer.
Career
After studying acting Miou-Miou worked in improvisational theater with Coluche and Patrick Dewaere, joining with them to help found the new comedy theatre Café de la Gare. She made her film debut in La vie sentimentale de Georges Le Tueur and La Cavale (both 1971).
In 1973 she appeared in three films, Elle court, elle court la banlieue, Les Granges brûlées and Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob. Her big break came with Blier's Going Places, released in 1974. During the 1970s, she had roles in such films as F comme Fairbanks (1976), Alain Tanner's Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976), and Losey's Roads to the South (1978). In Memoirs of a French Whore (1979), directed by Daniel Duval, she portrayed a young prostitute and received a César Award for the role. Many of these 1970s films were released internationally to art-house venues. In 1976 she appeared in one of the last spaghetti Westerns, Damiano Damiani's A Genius, Two Friends, and an Idiot.
