best film: Three Colours: Blue from Kieslowski and Cache from Haneke stand alone in the upper echelon for Juliette Binoche. Her split second role in Three Colours: Red is omitted from contention here. She has a slew of films in a tier or two below: Lovers on a Bridge, Summer Hours, English Patient, Code Unknown.

Binoche has been as steady as a rock for decades- but her high-water mark is clearly 1993’s Three Colours : Blue working with Kieslowski
best performance: The answer is Three Colours: Blue and it is not close. This is no insult to the rest of her oeuvre. She wears the tragic moments of the film so well. Binoche plays Julie and this is a one-woman show as far as acting is concerned. Kieślowski’s lingering camera, pauses, and stays tight on Binoche for powerful silent moments. To be clear, for most actresses in film’s history a performance like Code Unknown, Certified Copy or even stuff off her top five like Sils Maria or The Unbearable Lightness of Being would be career highlights- but not for Binoche with her central role in this grand masterpiece. Her top three performances (3) seems a step above, but her best four (4) through eleven (11) or twelve (12) performances seem fairly interchangeable.
stylistic innovations/traits: For almost forty (40) years now has been Ms. International cinema. Throughout her career she has worked in her native France, but she has also worked with some of the great auteurs from around the globe (see below) and has coveted César (Three Colours: Blue), a win at Cannes (Certified Copy), and an Oscar (for a performance in English- yes The English Patient). She has sparred with Daniel Day-Lewis (The Unbearable Lightness of Being), Ralph Fiennes (The English Patient), Denis Lavant (twice- both Mauvais sang and The Lovers on the Bridge) and others and she always comes out on top (or even at worst). She is in one of the best films of both the 1990s (Three Colours: Blue) and the 2000s (Cache).

Binoche worked and excelled in her native France (here in Carax’s The Lovers on the Bridge)

She has also found success outside France as well- whether it be her collaborations with Haneke or her work here in The English Patient.
directors worked with:KrzysztofKieślowski (3) but it is a bit of a cheat as it is really one film (Three Colours : Blue and the other two are extremely brief appearances). Leos Carax (2), Michael Haneke (2), Olivier Assayas (2) and Abbas Kiarostami. She has also worked with Anthony Minghella, Jean-Luc Godard and Hsiao-Hsien Hou. Her top ten performances include films from directors from Poland, Germany, France, the UK, Iran, and Taiwan.

from Code Unknown here-Binoche has often sacrificed starring roles to be a key part of a greater whole.
top ten performances:
- Three Colours: Blue
- The Lovers on the Bridge
- Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys
- The English Patient
- Certified Copy
- Summer Hours
- Mauvais sang
- The Flight of the Red Balloon
- Cache
- Clouds of Sils Maria

Binoche’s place on this list is less tied to one director than many of the other great actors. She also has maintained her stature as one of the greats for decades now- unlike some great actors that have burned brightly for a short stretch of time and flamed out quickly.
archiveable films
1985- Hail Mary |
1986- Mauvais sang |
1988- Unbearable Lightness of Being |
1991- The Lovers on a Bridge |
1993- Three Colours: Blue |
1994- Three Colours: White |
1994- Three Colours: Red |
1996- The English Patient |
2000- Chocolat |
2000- Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys |
2000- The Widow of Saint-Pierre |
2005- Cache |
2007- The Flight of the Red Balloon |
2008- Summer Hours |
2010- Certified Copy |
2014- Clouds of Sils Maria |
Could you mention on each page what their previous ranking was? Would be fun for posterity’s sake. Binoche went up a few spots right? Deservedly so, but what led to her improved ranking?
@Matthew Moore- thank you for the comment- I am flattered enough if some people care about my updated rankings. I have not historically kept track of previous rankings. Perhaps its being selfish but do not care to dwell on where I got it wrong (wildly wrong in some cases). I’d like to think each update on the site is tweak or improvement in the right direction.
I second a record of their previous rankings. Always love to see if they’ve improved or moved down etc. I get that your point is that this is a more ‘accurate’ list now, but I find it interesting to see how things are tracking. Like on TSPDT it’s always great to see how a film is tracking over time.
@Matthew Moore and @Joel- I’ll post the whole list here if you want to track before it disappears:
1. Ingrid Bergman
2. Katharine Hepburn
3. Meryl Streep
4. Giulietta Masina
5. Lillian Gish
6. Jeanne Moreau
7. Liv Ullman
8. Catherine Deneuve
9. Marlene Dietrich
10. Barbara Stanwyck
11. Faye Dunaway
12. Diane Keaton
13. Juliette Binoche
14. Julie Christie
15. Julianne Moore
16. Audrey Hepburn
17. Judy Garland
18. Sissy Spacek
19. Bette Davis
20. Anna Karina
21. Mia Farrow
22. Ellen Burstyn
23. Deborah Kerr
24. Frances McDormand
25. Elizabeth Taylor
26. Jane Fonda
27. Maria Falconetti
28. Gena Rowlands
29. Anna Magnani
30. Emily Watson
31. Shirley MacLaine
32. Gong Li
33. Naomi Watts
34. Maggie Cheung
35. Sigourney Weaver
36. Kate Winslet
37. Janet Gaynor
38. Nicole Kidman
39. Julie Delpy
40. Holly Hunter
41. Uma Thurman
42. Helen Mirren
43. Scarlett Johansson
44. Marion Cotillard
45. Lauren Bacall
46. Amy Adams
47. Vivien Leigh
48. Michelle Williams
49. Charlize Theron
50. Jean Arthur
51. Liza Minnelli
52. Isuzu Yamada
53. Claudette Colbert
54. Claudia Cardinale
55. Natalie Portman
56. Isabelle Huppert
57. Tilda Swinton
58. Emma Stone
59. Joan Fontaine
60. Cate Blanchett
61. Susan Sarandon
62. Joan Crawford
63. Glenn Close
64. Anne Bancroft
65. Natalie Wood
66. Simone Signoret
67. Marilyn Monroe
68. Maureen O’Hara
69. Jodie Foster
70. Shelley Winters
71. Hilary Swank
72. Anjelica Huston
73. Grace Kelly
74. Shelley Duvall
75. Laura Dern
76. Vanessa Redgrave
77. Ruth Gordon
78. Kirsten Dunst
79. Hanna Schygulla
80. Bibi Andersson
81. Janet Leigh
82. Jessica Chastain
83. Patricia Arquette
84. Harriet Andersson
85. Anouk Aimee
86. Kim Novak
87. Greta Garbo
88. Irene Jacob
89. Lorraine Bracco
90. Anna Paquin
91. Bjork
92. Rosalind Russell
93. Catherine Keener
94. Jennifer Lawrence
95. Penelope Cruz
96. Greta Gerwig
97. Emma Thompson
98. Gloria Swanson
99. Cathy Moriarty
100. Talia Shire
Thanks! Wow. 10 places for Binoche is crazy. What led to that change?
@Matthew Moore- Well it was not one thing. Her top ten is just so solid, her work in Three Colours: Blue is just greater than I had previously given her credit for, and I came to the realization that a few other actors just needed to move down
Awesome! Thanks for that
Even if it’s no more than a Recommend, I do feel like you have to still mention that she worked with Godard in the Directors section.
@Zane- Thank you- quite right. This was a miss on my end- I have corrected it here- appreciated your help
Do you think that anybody will be omitted from the new ranking?
@Finn- yes for sure- spoiler alert but I completely overlooked Monica Vitti (just a horrible miss) on the previous rankings so that’s at least one actor that will have to be omitted to make room for Vitti.
Man im hyped for the rest of this list. It seems there have been some big changes
WOW. I didn’t expect this at all and I absolutely LOVE it. Binoche is an acting goddess and she totally deserves the ranking here. I’m shocked in the best way possible. And extremely eager to see how this one goes of course. Give it up for Juliette Binoche. This ride will be absolutely wonderful.
Drake have you ever seen her movie with Cronenberg, ‘Cosmopolis”?
@Harry- I have- twice in that initial run in 2012- so it has been ten years. But I sort of concurred, at least at the time, with the 58/100 on metacritic. I’d like to see it again though.
@Malith- thank you for the help here
It is interesting seeing the advantage of resumes French actresses have over their male counterparts in regards to this list (very few, if any can compete with Binoche, Deneuve, Moreau, Karina etc). Is there something to be said for French cinema providing better roles for women?
@Ce – very good observation/question and I like @KidCharlemagne’s response. There is certainly some randomness involved- and the competition is just a little more stacked on the male side- not talking talent- just as far as resumes go.
The greatest directors in France (Godard, Truffaut) are in love with french actress. We don’t have a Kurosawa – Mifune or a Scorsese – DeNiro. Simple as that. Depardieu played with Truffaut 2 times, Belmondo with Godard 2 times. Delon played for the italiens so…
Another thing, french actress succed better in Hollywood or other countries (Binoche is a great exemple).