A Born Actress
Caroline Raynaud was one of France's most promising young actresses. She was born in Orléans, has worked in across the world, and has recently moved and reinvented herself as a North American actress. She is now sharing time between Paris, New York, and Toronto.
She was discovered in a pub on the Champs-Élysées. While serving drinks to pay down nursing school bills, director Olivier Dahan noticed her manner and immediately cast her in La Môme (2007). She played the character Ginou, best friend of Edith Piaf, alongside Marion Cotillard.
Recently, she played Brigitte Abernathy in the psychological thriller The Boathouse (2021) directed by Hannah Cheesman. She is also part of the cast of The Baker (post-production) playing alongside Ron Perlman (HellBoy), a feature film directed by Jonathan Sobol and is Caro in Some Other Woman (post-production) a feature film directed by Joel David Moore.
Her first performance was at the age of 10, where she played Viola in an interpretation of Twelfth Night. Since then Raynaud has shown her range in a variety of genres, deftly moving between French and English speaking roles.
After La Vie en Rose (2007), she played Alexia, the daughter-in-law of Michèle Laroque, in The Merry Widow/Enfin Veuve (2008), directed by Isabelle Mergault; Paule Fétiveau, a nurse in the Beaune La Rolande concentration camp, alongside Mélanie Laurent and Jean Reno in La Rafle (2010), directed by Rose Bosch; and Juliette with Nicolas Duvauchelle in la blonde aux seins nus (2010), directed by Manuel Pradal.
Raynaud played the lead and only role in Stardust (2011), an experimental gore movie directed by Sandy Depretz and shot in Finland. It is the story of a woman who hears voices and goes to Finland to escape herself.
She has worked on one movie and two short films with director Guillaume Levil, including on Tour de Cheville (2014), which has been selected for more than 70 festivals and 15 prizes.
Her first Canadian production Fishing in the Moonlight (2016) was awarded best short film at the 2017 Cannes short film festival. Produced by Jason Jallet and directed by Christian Monnier, it is the story of Marion, a French girl who crosses the ocean to get married in the snow.
In 2017 she was cast as Alex, in the Canadian horror sci-fi feature Project Ithaca (2019), directed by Nicholas Humphries. She will also be Lise in the French feature film Moi et le Che (2018), directed by Patrice Gautier, with Patrick Chesnais.
Outside of her acting, Raynaud enjoys singing in the shower (mezzo soprano) and painting. She is not a vegetarian, enjoys a dedicated yoga practice and frequently vacations at the seaside village where she spent her childhood summers.
Coming soon, “Les liaisons dangereuses: Correspondances inédites” a webcast produced by The French Theatre of Toronto, where she is La marquise de Merteuil.