Virginie Efira celebrates her 44th birthday this Wednesday, May 5. The one who was named in the best actress category at the Césars this year has managed to establish herself in French cinema in a few years. Yet the young Belgian was not predestined for a great career as an actress. Before shining in the biggest roles in cinema, she worked as a TV host on Belgian channels, then in France on M6. She began her TV career in 1998 on the Belgian channel Club RTL. She then hosts a program for teenagers called Mégamix on RTL9 with Lidia Gervais. She will continue her TV career in Belgium by taking the reins of Star Academy and Looking for the New Star.
It was in 2003 that she arrived in France, spotted in a weather casting. She will follow programs on M6 with Opération Séduction, Classé Confidential, but above all Nouvelle Star. Virginie Efira will meet Julien Doré, one of the winners, who has now become one of her best friends. After five years of good and loyal service, the presenter leaves M6 for Canal to present Canal Almost there. It was in 2010 that she definitively put an end to her career on TV. A choice she has never regretted.
Before being consecrated as an actress, the world of cinema was however wary of her. “I came from TV. So, at first, I was offered entertainment which I filmed with pleasure. Then came Victoria, where director Justine Triet shed light on the many facets of my personality, including my anxieties. . This is exactly what I dreamed of“, she explained on September 13 to Télé-Star. A role that gave him real status in the cinema.
It still took ten years for the Belgian forty-something to manage to take off the label of popular TV host. In Albert Dupontel’s latest film Adieu les cons, Virginie Efira plays Suze Trappet, a hairdresser who has inhaled too much hairspray and who learns that she is sick and wants to enjoy her last moments. A role that earned him a nomination at the last Cesar ceremony. The actress began late by lending her voice to the cat Garfield in the animated film of the same name released in France in 2004. Secondary roles in several TV movies followed. A job that will pay off since she is offered her first big role in the cinema in 2008 in the film Le Siffleur, in which she plays alongside Thierry Lhermitte.
We will then see her in the romantic comedy Love is better for two with Manu Payet and Clovis Cornillac in 2010. She will also be the headliner of La chance de ma vie in 2010 alongside François-Xavier Demaison. Virginie Efira will then play with Pierre Niney of the Comédie-Française in 20 years apart, a romantic comedy which will be hailed by critics. It was in 2015 that she began a career shift by playing her first dramatic roles. This is the case with the moving film Le Goût des Merveilles in 2015.
The changeover will be with the role of Victoria in the eponymous film by Justine Trier. She plays with Vincent Lacoste an anxious judge who is cornered in her professional and personal life. This will earn her the title of Best Actress at the Belgian Magritte ceremony in 2016. In 2018, she will meet her new companion Niels Schneider in the film Un amour impossible, adapted from the novel by Christine Angot. In 2021, Virginie Efira, we will see her in Benedetta by Paul Verhoeven. She plays a nun excluded from her community because of her homosexuality.
Virginie Efira forms with Niels Schneider one of the most glamorous couples of French cinema. “Right now, I’m the greatest lover in the world,” even Virginie Efira confided to Vogue last summer. Yet initially, their couple surprised. They met during the filming of the film Un amour impossible in 2018. Their age difference of 10 years then aroused many comments, which had the gift of annoying the actress. When a journalist from Elle magazine asks her about the subject, she gets carried away that this question is only asked of women. “You’re right to blush. Because I notice that’s a question you never ask Niels… You only ask women, never a guy who’s ten years older than his girlfriend. “, retorted then Virgnie Efira. She remembers about it from her first marriage. When she was only 22 years old, the former host of M6 married “someone who was ten years older than me”. “Never, never, was anyone talking to me about this age difference!”.
The story between Virginie Efira and Niels Schneider also surprised the film crew of Un amour impossible because they were very distant on the set at the time. “We didn’t say a word to each other. When there were only three of us, for example, and someone was leaving, I said to myself: ‘Oh no, I’m going to find myself next to her'”, explained Niels Schneider in I love you, etc. on France 2 in January 2020. On the set, everyone thinks they hate each other, but the young actor is simply intimidated by Virginie Efira. “I was convinced that we were going to have a story and at the same time, as soon as I was next to her, there was panic,” he confided. Yet they spin from the perfect love.
In 2013, the actress Virginie Efira became the mother for the first time of a girl named Ali, from her relationship with the director Mabrouk El Mechri. Now 8 years old, Ali follows her mother wherever she goes. “All the directors know her. I take her to the shoots, even if it means educating her on the spot. I like that she is there”, she confided to Liberation and to explain to HER: “Even if we are very close with my daughter, (…) that does not prevent me from trying to do the things that I love. I do not have a sacrificial vision of motherhood”.
The one who is in a relationship with actor Niels Schneider would also be ready to have a second, as she had declared to Paris Match. “A child, it happens all of a sudden. You have to be there in the moment. So, I don’t worry four years in advance. And then, it changed my order of priorities in the sense that my work is more important than before. I take it less lightly because I want to pass something on to my daughter (…) I like the idea of total commitment, of strong bonds. I would be ready to have a child again, for example”.
