Emmanuelle Seigner was born in Paris, in 1966, to a photographer father and a journalist mother. Her aunt Francoise and grandfather Louis were members of one of the oldest and most renowned theater companies in the world, Comedie Francaise.

She attended a convent school until age 14, when she parlayed her unique beauty into an international modeling career. Four years later, she debuted on the silver screen in 1984’s Year of the Jellyfish, and from there the work kept coming, including roles in Jean-Luc Godard's Detective in 1985, and the French drama Cours Prive a year later.

Emmanuelle Seigner’s big break -- in more ways than one -- arrived in 1988, when legendary and somewhat notorious director Roman Polanski cast her in Frantic with Harrison Ford. Not only was it great exposure for her, but she also met her husband on the set (Polanski). The two married the following year.

Roman Polanski would cast his wife on two more occasions: in 1992’s Bitter Moon and in the 1999 supernatural thriller The Ninth Gate. In between those films, the couple had two children.

After years of being judged not as an actress but as the wife of Roman Polanski, Emmanuelle Seigner began to emerge from Polanski’s shadow and come into her own as an actress with equal parts talent and beauty. In 2003, she played a stripper in Corps a corps and that same year starred in the celebrated Portuguese action flick Os Imortais.

Then, in 2007, she landed roles in two high-profile films: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly about a paralyzed man who wrote a memoir about his condition merely by moving one eye up and down, and the critically acclaimed La Vie en Rose, a biopic about French singer Edith Piaf. Her role in that film earned her a Golden Satellite Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

As a singer, Emmanuelle Seigner has recorded songs for the soundtracks to The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and a documentary about husband Roman Polanski, to name a couple. However, in 2006, she joined the French musical duo Ultra Orange as their lead singer. As Ultra Orange & Emmanuelle, the band released their first self-titled album in spring of 2007.

She had two film projects in 2009: starring in the French comedy Le Code a change and starring opposite Oscar-winner Adrian Brody in the thriller Giallo.