“My films are expressions of my politics,” says Mickey 17 and Being Maria actor Anamaria Vartolomei. “I want to be nourished by the kinds of women I play, which is maybe why I gravitate toward bold and ambitious characters.”

Not many actors, much less ones in their 20s, would have the guts to make such a bold statement. Vartolomei is different. Having worked in the French film industry for 15 years, beginning at age 10, when she made her screen debut opposite Isabelle Huppert in 2011's My Little Princess, the French-Romanian actor’s convictions guide her choices in roles. Following her César-winning breakout performance in Audrey Diwan’s Happening, 2021, an adaptation of the novel by Annie Ernaux, Vartolomei emerged as one of the faces of a new wave of French stars. Her work is unique for the frank ways in which it deals with gendered power and female sexuality, and her intrepid performances have set her apart with their aptness to question the historically fraught narratives surrounding women.

Over drinks in a Midtown lounge, Vartolomei talks about embodying characters based on real women who “learn to speak and navigate their desires against the pressures of taboo.” In My Little Princess, which is based on the director Eva Ionesco’s childhood, Vartolomei plays a hypersexualized muse mistreated by her photographer mother (Huppert). In Happening, she’s a gifted college student seeking out an illegal abortion in France circa 1963.

Vartolomei is softspoken, but she radiates poise and determination. She doesn’t skip a beat when asked whom she’d like to work with in the future (the Safdies) and expresses disenchantment with French film culture, which she sees as stuck in the past. “France sometimes feels so behind in terms of accepting guilt and responsibility for past [wrongs],” she says.

The newcomer didn’t know much about Maria Schneider when she was handed the script for Being Maria, a biopic about the French actress that reckons with the abuse she endured on the set of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, 1972. By the time she was cast, however, she was “driven by anger.” Schneider was only 19 when Marlon Brando, her 48-year-old costar, improvised a rough sex scene without telling her. Yet the film’s canonical status has, for decades, overshadowed Schneider’s legacy and the ways her life was affected by this early trauma.

Directed by Jessica Palud, Being Maria, which premiered in Cannes last year and is currently playing in U.S. theaters, follows Schneider from the '70s through the '80s, even restaging––with the help of an intimacy coordinator––the violent scene with Brando (played by Matt Dillon). The camera stays on Vartolomei’s face throughout, forcing viewers to sit with the turbulence of her confusion, shame, and anguish. “Everyone was crying that day on set,” the actor recalls. “I felt so fragile and vulnerable, so the rest of the film was about finding the strength to move on, about turning the page for Maria.”

The 25-year-old doesn’t come from an entertainment background––her family immigrated to Paris from Romania when she was 6––though she speaks lucidly about what she views as the French belief in artistic freedom at any cost.

“Last Tango in Paris is so kitschy,” Vartolomei groans. “But in Paris, repertory theaters used to play it all the time––it was even screening around the corner on the first day of shooting Being Maria!”

Watching films like Being Maria and Happening, you’ll be drawn into Vartolomei’s piercing gaze. Her characters in both films exhibit a quiet, controlled confidence that makes their inevitable breakdowns all the more devastating.

It’s a fiery yet naturalistic performance style that Bong Joon Ho was impressed by when he was the president of the jury at the 2021 Venice Film Festival––the same year that Happening won the top prize. Shortly after awarding the film, Bong sought Vartolomei out for a role in his madcap science fiction comedy Mickey 17, casting her as a melancholic yet highly principled spacewoman who directly propositions Robert Pattinson’s dopey hero for sex.

In other recent roles––like the French blockbuster The Count of Monte Cristo, 2024, and the Star Wars satire, The Empire, 2024––she’s proven saavy at depicting tough women whose steely exteriors don’t preclude them from undergoing raw sexual awakenings. Soon, she’ll be on TV, as the lead in a Dangerous Liaisons prequel series set to premiere on Max, proving that her starpower and international appeal reflect the feminine “truths” she craves on-screen.

“I love when the intimate becomes universal. Doubt, desire, fear, jealousy––these are the things that make up real women,” Vartolomei explains. “I want to unleash this for my characters.”