Biography
Irène Marie Jacob (born 15 July 1966) is a French-born Swiss actress considered one of the preeminent French actresses of her generation. Jacob gained international recognition and acclaim through her work with Polish film director Krzysztof Kieslowski, who cast her in the lead role of The Double Life of Véronique and Three Colors: Red. She came to represent an image of European sophistication, through her "classic beauty and thoughtful, almost melancholic style of acting." Description above fr...
Known For
Complete Filmography

A Private Life
2025
as Vera
When renowned psychiatrist Lilian Steiner learns of the death of one of her patients she is deeply troubled. Convinced that it was murder, she decides...

Why War
2025
In 1932, Albert Einstein was invited by the League of Nations to address a letter on any subject to any person. He chose to correspond with Sigmund Fr...

Who by Fire
2024
as Hélène Falke
Seventeen-year-old Jeff stays at film director Blake Cadieux's wilderness lodge after being invited by friend Max's family. When strange events occur,...

Meeting with Pol Pot
2024
as Lise Delbo
Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) - 1978. Three French journalists are invited by the Khmer Rouge to conduct an exclusive interview of the regime's lead...

Hôtel Silence
2024
as Kristina
Jean, in his fifties, has lost his lust for life. He leaves Canada for a faraway country, somewhere in Europe. A beautiful place to end his days, he t...

Shikun
2024
A diverse cross-section of Israeli society converges in a single multi-use building, the Shikun. As people of different languages, origins and generat...

Le Voyage en pyjama
2024
as Florence
40-something Victor, humanities professor and amateur meteorologist, is a madcap, a friendly dabbler, who lives day by day, alongside is wife Anne.

Re-belles
2023
as Self

The Wild One
2023
as Self
In the work of Jack Garfein - Holocaust survivor, theater and film director, key figure in the formation of the Actors Studio - past and and present f...

Shoot to Live
2022
as Self
A documentary on filmmaker Claude Lelouch, following him over seven years.
Talking Heads 2021
2021
as Self
The film was inspired by one of the most important documentaries shot by Krzysztof Kieślowski, Talking Heads (1980). The director asked his interlocut...

Marie Trintignant : Le Choix du jeu
2021
as Self
This film revisits the career and development of Marie Trintignant through the loving and often amused eyes of her father Jean-Louis Trintignant, as w...

Villa Caprice
2021
as Nancy Fontaine
Famous lawyer, Luc Germon adds Gilles Fontaine, one of the most powerful bosses in France, to his clients. He is suspected of having acquired a magnif...

Les Dominos
2020
as Irène

Romantic Guide to Lost Places
2020
as Brigitte
Benno and Allegra: he's over fifty, English, and drinks like a fish; she's twenty years younger, a travel blogger with lots of imagination. They both ...

The Scientific Proof of the Existence of God
2019
as Christine
Jean-Luc and his old gang of 1968 pacifists, now in their seventies, reunite to make a film protesting against Swiss military export. After blowing up...

À cause des filles…?
2019
as Eliane
At a wedding where the husband runs away, everyone has his own story to tell about the trivial misfortune of a person in love with someone that slips ...

Letter to Theo
2019
as Narrator (voice)
The filmmaker Théo Angelopoulos died on January 24th, 2012, knocked down by a motorbike on the set of his final film. In his unfinished film, he was t...

Tales of Mexico
2017
as Ángela
The space will be witness of dreams, hopes, disappointments and dramatic destinies of its residents, delivering an intimate human history of Mexico th...

Angela Merkel, une histoire allemande
2017
as Narrator

13 Summers Underwater
2017
Parallel stories connected through an intimacy with death. The living and the dead communicate through visions, memories and reality.

Two Snails Set Off
2017
as (voice)
A forest full of animated animals encourage a pair of snails, who are fully clad in black because they are in mourning for a dead leaf, to celebrate t...

Home Away From Home
2017
as Writer
A taxi driver, a young girl and a backpacker simultaneously experience a wonderful journey in Tokyo, where they find connections to their own homes in...

Eternity
2016
as Mère de Gabrielle
Valentine marries at the end of the 19th century, and love passes through her family from generation to generation.

Sayonara
2015
The world's first human-android acting duo, called Android Theater Project, is the collaborative brainchild of noted Japanese playwright Oriza Hirata ...

Ella Maillart: Double Journey
2015
as Ella Maillart (voice)
Summer 1939. Ella Maillart and Annemarie Schwarzenbach leave Europe for Asia. Ella hopes to make an ethnographic film and to help Annemarie get off dr...

Paris, Love, Cut
2015
as Chloé Artaud
At 45 Arnaud wants to have a child with Chloe, shoot his second movie....but he is blocked.After leaving Chloe he went back to teaching theater and me...

The Easy Way Out
2015
as Mathilde
Patrick, a travel agent in his early 30s, lives with Arthur, an immigration lawyer; but for a long time, Patrick has been sleeping on an air mattress ...

Dying of the Light
2014
as Michelle Zuberain
Evan Lake, a veteran CIA agent, has been ordered to retire. But when his protégé uncovers evidence that Lake's nemesis, the terrorist Banir, has resur...

François Truffaut l'insoumis
2014
as Narrator (voice)
This portrait of the world-famous French director based on his personal correspondance reveals the little known insurgent side of his personnality. Fe...

We Love You, You Bastard
2014
as Printemps Kaminsky
A war photographer and absent father, who spends more time taking care of his camera than his four daughters, enjoys a happy life in the Alps with his...

Les enfants rouges
2014

The Man Who Made Angels Fly
2013
as Self
When the lights dim and the stage is revealed, Meschke channels life through the strings of his puppets, triggering the spiritual connection between t...

The Lanzac Clan
2013
as Valérie Lanzac
A war of inheritance in the Lanzac family, a rich industrial family from Bordeaux, against a backdrop of family secrets and the unsaid. Elisabeth Lanz...

Love Flesh
2013
as Self
During the course of a series of voyages, the pocket cameras of Pippo Delbono capture unique moments, ordinary and extraordinary meetings. From a hote...

La solitude du pouvoir
2012
as Laurence
Pierre Vasseur is the French president. He has a busy schedule: resolving political crises, abating popular anger, tolerating sarcastic journalists, a...

Rio Sex Comedy
2010
as Irène
A group of strangers from different countries end up on Rio's beaches. Seeking self-fulfillment, they look for answers to existential questions. Yet i...

Déchaînées
2009
as Aurore
Lucy, a 19-year old law student and intern at a Swiss television network in Geneva, comes across her double in archival footage about the woman’s libe...

The French Kissers
2009
as La mère d'Aurore
An awkward adolescent boy and his angst-ridden friends try their best to fit in amongst a cast of varied characters.

The Dust of Time
2008
as Eleni
A, an American film director of Greek ancestry, is making a film that tells his story and the story of his parents. It is a tale that unfolds in Italy...

Fallen Heroes
2008
as Anne
Forty year-old Bruno Ledeux, seen sitting across from the doctor, gives the impression of a man who is no longer young but not yet old.Condemned to re...

The Inner Life of Martin Frost
2007
as Claire Martin
A writer awakens one day to find a strange but beautiful woman in bed with him. He quickly falls in love with her, thinking he has found his muse, but...

The Education of Fairies
2006
as Ingrid
A man's life is turned upside down after he is abandoned by the woman he loves.

French Beauty
2005
A story about the riddle of femininity in French cinema.
Still Alive: A Film About Krzysztof Kieslowski
2005
as Self
Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz directed this insightful TV documentary (2005) tracing the Polish filmmaker's career. Former classmates reminisce about Kieslo...

Battle of the Brave
2004
as Angélique de Roquebrune
In the mid-18th Century, as England and France battle over control of Canada, an epic romance between a peasant woman and a trapper unfurls

Autumn
2004
as Michelle
Jean-Pierre is a hit man in Paris. He wants to stop; an incentive is reconnecting to Michelle, a childhood friend. He's ready to commit himself to her...

The Pornographer: A Love Story
2004
as Anna
The relationship between a director and an actress takes a turn when the lines between art and life are crossed.

The Legend of Princess Parva
2003
as Parva's Mother (voice)
The island of Kiam was once a paradise place with a kind Maharaja as a ruler. But one day the villainous Malaw killed the island’s ruler and deprived ...

Letter from an Unknown Woman
2002
as Rose
Vienna, in the 1930s. The attractive and famous writer Albert Rank receives the letter from a stranger. He discovers that she devoted her entire life ...

The Landlords
2002
as Julie
Directed by Rémi Waterhouse, Mille Millièmes is centered around an eccentric ensemble of apartment residents. Kindness is noticeably absent among thei...

Heart of the Festival
2002
A short film containing some of the highlights of the Cannes Film Festival's storied history.

Four Play
2001
as Fiona Delgrazia
A romantic comedy about the fleeting attractions between men and women on the set of a popular British sitcom.

The Marcorelle Affair
2000
as Agneska
François Marcorelle, an investigation magistrate in Chambéry, finds himself in the room of a young Polish girl that he met in a restaurant

Spy Games
1999
as Natasha Scriabina / Anna Belinka
A romantic suspense-comedy about CIA agent Harry (Bill Pullman) and SVR agent Natasha (Irene Jacob) fighting to save the world, their lives and secret...

My Life So Far
1999
as Aunt Heloise
A memoir of the lives of a family growing up on a post World War I British estate headed up by a strong disciplinarian, her daughter, her inventor hus...

The Big Brass Ring
1999
as Cela Brandini
Blake Pellarin is on the campaign trail to become president of the United States. While making a stop in St. Louis, a chance encounter brings his past...

American Cuisine
1998
as Gabrielle Boyer
Following his discharge from the Navy for hitting a superior officer, Loren takes a chance and moves to France, to learn haute cuisine under a four st...

U.S. Marshals
1998
as Marie
U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard is accompanying a plane load of convicts from Chicago to New York. The plane crashes spectacularly, and Mark Sheridan escapes....

Incognito
1997
as Prof. Marieke van den Broeck
Harry Donovan is an art forger who paints fake Rembrandt picture for $500,000. The girl he meets and gets into bed with in Paris, Marieke, turns out t...

Victory
1996
as Alma
Axel Heyst is an American recluse with a dubious past living in the Dutch East Indies port of Surabaya circa 1913. Staying in a German hotel there, He...

Othello
1995
as Desdemona
The evil Iago pretends to be friend of Othello in order to manipulate him to serve his own end in the film version of this Shakespeare classic.

All Men Are Mortal
1995
as Regina
Melodrama about a man cursed with immortality, who tries to declare his undying love for a depressed actress.

Beyond the Clouds
1995
as The Girl
Four tales, each centered on a woman, journey inward to explore the enigmatic reality of their lives, connecting through a single narrative thread.

To Make a Film Is to Be Alive
1995
as Self (uncredited)
A behind-the-scenes look by wife Enrica Antonioni into Michelangelo Antonioni's passion for cinema as he directs Beyond the Clouds (1995), assisted by...

Runaways
1995
as Prune
Two girls meet on a train: Prune is looking for her father whom she has not seen since she was a little girl, Marina is looking for the mother she has...

Kieślowski Cannes 94
1994
as Self
A documentary about the showing of Krzysztof Kieślowski's film RED at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, including interviews with the director and the ca...

Three Colors: Red
1994
as Valentine
Part-time model Valentine unexpectedly befriends a retired judge after she runs over his dog. At first, the grumpy man shows no concern about the dog,...
Enak
1993
as Lucielle Spaak
The astronaut Charles Enak refuses to come back to Earth after completing a mission in orbit. While he also refuses to give any explanation for his be...

The Prediction
1993
as Ludmila Egorova
A popular middle-aged writer is warned by a fortuneteller that he will die in exactly 24 hours. He then meets a man, who claims to be him. The writer ...

The Secret Garden
1993
as Mary's Mother / Lilias Craven
A young British girl born and reared in India loses her neglectful parents in an earthquake. She is returned to England to live at her uncle's castle....

Claude
1992
as Beatrice de Lucio
A hapless, bad-luck prone loser meets a free-spirited Frenchwoman who inspires him to get his life back on track.

Le Moulin de Daudet
1992
as Mme Daudet
Based on the life of French novelist Alphonse Daudet.

The Secret of Sarah Tombelaine
1991
as Sarah
Legend has it that Archangel Michael confronted the Dragon and imprisoned him under a huge stone called today Mont Saint Michel. Winter 1991, the Moun...

The Double Life of Véronique
1991
as Weronika / Véronique
Véronique is a beautiful young French woman who aspires to be a renowned singer; Weronika lives in Poland, has a similar career goal and looks identic...

Kieslowski: Dialogue
1991
as Self
Documentary featuring a candid interview with Kieślowski and rare behind-the-scenes footage from the set of The Double Life of Véronique

Errors of Youth
1989
as Anne
The oddest things come in pairs. In 1989, there were two foreign films on the market whose titles translated to Errors of Youth or Youthful Indiscreti...

Gang of Four
1989
as Marine
Anna, Joyce, Claude and Lucia are all students under the tutelage of Constance Dumas, a renowned film instructor. Lucia moves in with the other girls....

Au Revoir les Enfants
1987
as Ms. Davenne, Piano Teacher
Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provinci...

The Prominents
N/A
as Janot Blum
Centers on a group of Nazi Germany's most prominent prisoners as they are transported across Europe to be used as bargaining chips in the German surre...
Maigret et le crime de la rue de Bellechasse
N/A
as Madame Maigret