What Fleur Delacour's Actress Has Been Doing Since Harry Potter Ended
When the fourth film in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, came out in 2005, fans finally got their first look at many new and interesting characters from the books. Based on the popular novel series by J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter's fourth outing focuses on the Triwizard Tournament, and introduces important characters like Viktor Krum, Cedric Diggory, and, of course, Fleur Delacour, played by French actress Clémence Poésy.
As the contestant in the tournament representing the visiting Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, Fleur is a talented witch who forms a friendship with Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) after he saves her little sister. Long after the competition and its fateful end, Fleur appears in Harry's life once again as the new girlfriend of Ron Weasley's (Rupert Grint) brother Bill (Domhnall Gleeson). Their relationship flourishes, leading to marriage, and Fleur fights bravely and loyally at Harry and the others' side during the Second Wizarding War.
Poésy plays Fleur in The Goblet of Fire as well as The Deathly Hallows — Part 1 and Part 2, perfectly embodying the graceful French witch as she tries to fit in with the Weasleys. But what happened to Poésy after Harry Potter ended?
Clémence Poésy starred in the crime drama The Tunnel
Shortly after the end of Harry Potterm Poésy booked The Tunnel, a British-French production based on the hit Danish-Swedish series called The Bridge (Bron/Broen). Poésy plays French Captain Elise Wassermann alongside Stephen Dillane as British Detective Chief Inspector Karl Roebuck. The show is about the two working together to find a serial killer who left two halves of two bodies in the Channel Tunnel, which connects France and the United Kingdom; a top half of a body belongs to a French politician, the bottom half to an English sex worker. The two countries must come together to stop the killer, nicknamed the "Truth Terrorist."
Poésy's character Elise has a difficult past and has trouble connecting with others, exhibiting traits of Asperger syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. She is also very intelligent, pays careful attention to details, and is devoted to her job. Her partner Karl helps her through any situations she finds difficult, and the two form a strong working relationship as they investigate the case at hand.
The first season of The Tunnel aired in 2013. As a bilingual co-production between France and the United Kingdom, the series aired on both Sky and Canal+ to great reviews. A second season — following a different crime with the same lead characters — aired in 2016, with the third and final season coming out at the end of 2017. The U.S. also made a similar adaptation of The Bridge with the same name in 2013, starring Diane Kruger and Demián Bichir.
Clémence Poésy played a young pregnant woman in the unnerving thriller The Ones Below
In 2015, Poésy starred in a British horror film called The Ones Below, which undeniably calls Rosemary's Baby an influence. She and Stephen Campbell Moore play a couple, Kate and Justin, who are expecting their first child. A similar couple who are also expecting, Theresa (Laura Birn) and Jon (David Morrissey), moves in downstairs and invite Kate and Justin to dinner. At the dinner, the two couples clash, and a sudden accident results in Theresa falling and losing the baby. She blames Kate, saying that she doesn't deserve to have a child.
Soon after, Kate gives birth to a healthy son named Billy, and Theresa and Jon suddenly seem very happy for them, even offering to babysit him so that Kate can have time for herself. Red flags for sure. Strange things start happening and Kate spies on them, finding evidence that Theresa and Jon are pretending Billy is their child. Of course, when she tries to show Justin, it's all gone. Still, Kate can't shake her suspicions, and she convinces Justin that they need to move. In the days leading up to the official move, everything seems to be going okay — but it wouldn't be a horror film with a happy ending, would it?
In Genius, Clémence Poésy portrayed Françoise Gilot, Picasso's longtime love and fellow painter
In 2018, Poésy starred in the second season of the anthology series Genius from National Geographic. While the first season follows the life of Albert Einstein, the second season focuses on Pablo Picasso, played by Antonio Banderas. Poésy stars as Françoise Gilot, a French painter who had a tumultuous relationship with Picasso over many years, having two children together.
Gilot first met Picasso in 1943, when she was 21 and he 61, and she ended up moving in with him in 1946. Their love affair lasted ten years. Gilot, who is about to turn 99 years old as of November 2020, clarified to The Guardian in 2016 that it was "an intellectual love, or a physical love, but certainly not a sentimental love," and it didn't end well. She said that when she told Picasso she was leaving, he responded by saying, "Nobody leaves a man like me." Gilot's relationship and association with Picasso may also have affected her own potential as an artist, as she was — and still is — an extremely talented painter.
The Nat Geo series doesn't spend too much time focusing on the darker parts of Picasso's life, instead really delving into his muses and how his artistry was shaped by the people and events going on around him. Poésy's depiction of Gilot is, naturally, a huge part of that.
Clémence Poésy was in Christopher Nolan's film Tenet
Just this year, Poésy joined the cast of director Christopher Nolan's new film Tenet, starring John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, and Elizabeth Debicki. The sci-fi action thriller follows Washington's character, a CIA agent, who manipulates time to prevent another world war.
In the film, Poésy plays a physicist named Barbara, who explains the movie's unique laws of time and space to Washington's Protagonist. This includes things like inverted bullets and "time stiles." She tells him, "Don't try to understand it, feel it," which is likely also a message to the audience, given how complex the film's concept is. Barbara is part of a shadowy organization called Tenet, which recruits Washington's character to help stop a possible Armageddon — or as they see it, "something worse" — from happening.
Tenet was delayed multiple times, but eventually landed on a release date of September 3, 2020 in the U.S. (August 26, 2020 in the U.K.). Nolan was adamant that the film be released in theaters, and not through streaming. The film did relatively well with critics, but many found Tenet extremely puzzling and hard to understand — similar to his previous sci-fi meta film Inception, but on a whole new level.