Sophie Guillemin (born 1 December 1977) is a French actress. She has appeared in such films as L'Ennui, Harry, He's Here to Help, Un chat un chat, and A la folie, pas du tout. In 2017, whilst on the set of the TV movie Remember Us, she met the actor Thierry Godard. The couple were married in August 2018. Guillemin met Godard on the set of the TV series Souviens-toi de Nous. At the time, he was mourning the loss of his partner, actress and drama teacher Blanche Veisberg, who died of cancer in 2017.
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Biography
As a hopeful actress, Sophie Guillemin hoped to make pocket money by applying for minor acting roles. She joined the cast of L’Ennui, after two years of Cédric Kahn searching for a lead actress. The role earned her a César nomination in 1999 in the best new female category.
Gérard Lefort, a journalist at Libération, wrote about Sophie Guillemin: "having sent a video essay to the casting of L'ennui, Sophie Guillemin has established herself by exploiting her "body of Venus and her soul of Greek antiquity".
She went on to make comedies such as: On fait comme on a dit with Gad Elmaleh, Jeanne Labrune's Ça ira mieux demain with Nathalie Baye ; social dramas: Du côté des filles with Clémentine Célarié, and thrillers : À la folie... pas du tout,where she played the best friend of Audrey Tautou, as well as Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien. In this film, released in 2000, she plays the sensual girlfriend of Sergi Lopez, a role for which she earned a nomination for the César for Best Upcoming Female.
Rejecting some of the roles that the directors offer her, Sophie Guillemin chose to refuse the nude scenes on screen. She converted to Islam at the age of 22 and wore a hijab as part of her spiritual route. She later stated: "The fact that I start wearing the headscarf has provoked violent reactions around me, especially in the film industry. There's been a lot of gossip. It was said that it was my daughter's father who prevented me from working, or that I had moved to Saudi Arabia, that I went to castings in a headscarf, etc. In the street, people's eyes were very hard." In 2002, she stopped filming. Of this time off, she said: "For five years, I didn't do anything except raise my daughter." She finally stopped wearing the hijab, saying, "I felt locked up, I couldn't feel the sun, the wind. I preferred to remove it so as not to scratch my faith, but keep it intact". After giving birth to her first child, she gradually rediscovered the "will to act" and returned to the cinema sets.
