Adèle Haenel

Personal context

Summary

Adèle Haenel is a French actor known for Water Lilies, Love at First Fight, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Her roles often center on complex women and relationships, and she has described cinema as political, praising greater racial and gender representation in Star Wars. She has identified as a feminist, spoken publicly about sexual violence and racism, and left the 2020 César ceremony after Roman Polanski won an award. She later said she was politicizing her departure from cinema to protest the industry’s tolerance of sexual abusers and its complicity with racist and ecocidal systems; in 2025, she joined a Gaza aid flotilla.