Eva Gaëlle Green was born on July 5, 1980 in Paris, France. Eva Green is indeed her real name. A lot of people think it's a stage name because she's French, but it's not. Eva's father is Swedish and her mother is French. Her last name isn't derived from an English name and is pronounced "grain" or "Greyne", according to herself. Eva's last name doesn't mean green, which is grön in Swedish. Instead, her name comes from the Swedish word gren, which means (tree) branch.

Her father is a Swedish dentist called Walter and isn't in the movie business. He acted in a film called Au hasard Balthazar in 1966, but it was his first and only on-screen experience. He's Swedish but grew up in France, so Eva doesn't speak Swedish, only a few words. Her mother is former actress Marlène Jobert. She's quite famous in France. She did movies with Godard and lots of other great directors. She doesn't work as an actress anymore. She now writes children's books.

Eva has a non-identical twin sister called Joy. They're very different from each other, even physically. While Eva is a brunette, Joy is a blonde. They don't really talk to each other (which doesn't mean that they don't talk at all). Joy studied business and wants to breed horses. She's more down-to-earth, more concrete than Eva is. They have different interests. Eva likes to say that Joy is more terrestrial and she is more lunar. Joy married an Italian count in September 2006 and they live together in Normandy, France.

Eva stopped French school when she was like 17 years old, and she went to the American school (in Paris) for a year. That's one of the reasons why she's bilingual in French and English. After she graduated, Eva spent three years at the Eva St. Paul drama school in Paris before attending a 10-week polishing course at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She also studied directing for a while at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Her theatre experience includes Didier Long's Jalousie En Trois Fax and Gerard Deshartes' Turcarcet. Her performance in Jalousie En Trois Fax was highly acclaimed and earned her a nomination for Les Molières (France's most important theatre award) for the category Révélation Théâtrale Féminine (Best Female Newcomer).

The Dreamers was Eva's first film. In 2003 she starred in the film Arsène Lupin from director Jean-Paul Salomé. Her filmography also includes Ridley Scott's Kingdom Of Heaven, in which she worked opposite Liam Neeson, Edward Norton, Jeremy Irons and Orlando Bloom. She turned down a role in Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia with Josh Hartnett and Scarlett Johansson, because she didn't want to be typecast as a femme fatale after her very naked performance as Isabelle in The Dreamers. The role went to Hilary Swank. She can currently be seen in Casino Royale in the role of duplicitous Vesper Lynd. She is the fourth French actress to be a Bond girl. After Casino Royale, Eva played Serafina Pekkala, the queen of a witch clan, in The Golden Compass, the first installment of a potential trilogy based on Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials." Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig were some of her co-stars.

On February 11th 2007, Eva won the Orange BAFTA Rising Star Award, which was voted by the public.

When she's not working, Eva likes to listen to classical music, eating and cooking good food, walking in Paris, walking her dog, going to the movies and thinking of the movies, going to museums, collecting art. She currently shares her time between London, where she lives, and Paris.


Info collected and/or translated from several international articles and interviews.
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