from GQ (US) / by Mark Healy

How Marion Cotillard went from a subtitled French bio-pic about Edith Piaf to starring as Johnny Depp’s moll in ‘Public Enemies’

One way to gauge the seriousness of any newly minted star is to watch what he or she does with all the attention. Two days after accepting an Oscar for her shape-shifting turn as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose—and delivering a speech so adorably gracious it could bump Sally Field from the official Oscar highlight reel—Marion Cotillard ditched the warm glow of Hollywood for a snowbound place where no one cared: a Menominee reservation in Wisconsin, to research her role as John Dillinger’s girl in this month’s gangster bio Public Enemies. The 33-year-old never asked the tribeswomen if they’d seen the Oscars or La Vie en Rose, in which Cotillard conjures Piaf’s fragility and ferocity so unnervingly, even regular Joes were drawn to the subtitled film. She brings the same nuance and energy to Billie Frechette, who was part Menominee, part French, and 100 percent aware of the company she kept. “She knew exactly what she was involved in,” Cotillard says of Frechette, who was married to a convicted robber when she took up with gentleman gangster Dillinger, “but what can you do against love?”

• Marion in GQ & InStyle, posted on June 17, 2009
• Marion Cotillard, Public Enemies Interview, posted on July 2, 2009
• Accent on experience, as Cotillard prepared to play Dillinger’s girl, posted on June 28, 2009
• Marion Cotillard, posted on April 7, 2011
• Accent was welcome task for Marion Cotillard, posted on June 23, 2009