Charlotte Rampling

Charlotte Rampling (born February 5, 1946, Sturmer, England) is a prolific English actress known for taking on seductive and complicated roles, including as a concentration camp survivor who has a sadomasochistic relationship with a former SS officer in the controversial 1974 film The Night Porter. Rampling has been in more than 100 movies over a career that dates back to the mid-1960s.

Early life and education

Rampling is the younger daughter of Isabel Anne Rampling (née Gurteen), a painter and heiress to the Gurteen clothing company, and Godfrey Lionel Rampling, an army officer who had won a gold medal at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. When Charlotte Rampling was 14 years old, she and her elder sister, Sarah, performed at the annual cabaret in Stanmore, in northwest London. She later described the experience to The Guardian: “I felt so great on stage. We wore fishnet tights, macs and berets, and sang a series of sweet French songs. I knew I was good, because I was absolutely in tune with myself at that moment.” After attending upscale private schools in Britain and France, Rampling enrolled at a London secretarial college.

Early acting roles and death of her sister

An advertising professional spotted Rampling when she was 17 years old, which led to her being cast in a Cadbury commercial. She quickly garnered parts in the 1965 comedy Rotten to the Core, followed by Georgy Girl (1966) alongside Lynn Redgrave; the trailer touted Rampling’s character as “a sexy little dish.” Rampling soon became a symbol of the swinging ’60s, but she was dealt a devastating blow in 1967 with the death of her sister, who was 23 years old. Sarah had been living in Argentina with her husband and had recently given birth. Rampling’s father told her and her mother that Sarah had died of a brain hemorrhage, but three years later he revealed to Rampling that Sarah had died by suicide and asked her to keep it a secret from her mother. Rampling told The Guardian, “I couldn’t be what I had been before. I couldn’t be happy any more. Your whole life changes.”

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First marriage, The Night Porter, and other films from the late 1960s to the mid-’70s

Rampling’s movies from the rest of the 1960s include the Italian film Sequestro di persona (1968; “Kidnapping”), directed by Gianfranco Mingozzi, and The Damned (1969), directed by Luchino Visconti. During this time Rampling’s living arrangement with her agent Bryan Southcombe and their friend, model Randall Laurence, led to much tabloid speculation about an open relationship, which Rampling denied for years. She married Southcombe in 1972, and they had a son, Barnaby Southcombe, that same year. In 1974 she starred in The Night Porter, which was cowritten and directed by Liliana Cavani. In one of her most famous films, Rampling played Lucia, a woman who reconnects with a former Nazi guard (played by Dirk Bogarde) who had raped her when she was in a concentration camp. “In her work, she went deeper, exposing herself in every way possible,” The Guardian wrote in a 2021 profile, citing The Night Porter and two other Rampling movies. “Unlike so many Hollywood roles, the sexuality at the core of hers wasn’t cute or passive or submissive. It was challenging, confrontational, defiant; she stared into the camera with those remarkable eyes, almost daring us to return her gaze.” Other films from this time include Zardoz (1974), Farewell, My Lovely (1975), and Foxtrot (1976).

Second marriage, depression, and films from the late 1970s to the mid-’90s

In 1976 Rampling met French composer Jean-Michel Jarre, and they soon left their respective spouses to pursue a relationship. In subsequent years the couple had a son, David Jarre (born 1977), and married (1978). Rampling began the 1980s with Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories (1980) and Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict (1982), starring alongside Paul Newman in the latter. She also had the lead role in such films as Max My Love (1986), about a woman who falls in love with a chimpanzee. About this time Rampling was being treated for depression, and in 1988 she suffered a breakdown. As she began to recover in the mid-1990s, she discovered through tabloids that her husband was having an affair with a younger woman. “It is not uncommon for a man to have an affair, or even for a woman to have an affair,” The Independent reported that she later remarked. “But the way I found out! In the tabloids. It was demeaning. And then for it to have continued. No, I could not forgive that at the time.” The couple divorced in 1996.

Roles from the late-1990s to the mid-2010s

Toward the late 1990s she appeared in a series of adaptations, including Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove (1997), Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1999), and Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1999). She began a long-term relationship with French businessman Jean-Noël Tassez, which ended in 2015 with his death from cancer. In the 2000s Rampling starred as a woman undone by her husband’s disappearance in François Ozon’s drama Under the Sand (2000), as a mystery writer in Ozon’s erotic thriller Swimming Pool (2003), and as a sexual tourist in Haiti in Laurent Cantet’s Heading South (2005). In the 2010s she had roles in Never Let Me Go (2010) and Melancholia (2011) as well as the lead in I, Anna (2012), directed by her eldest son, Barnaby Southcombe. In addition, she had recurring roles on such TV series as Dexter (2013) and Broadchurch (2015).

Oscar nomination and controversy

Rampling’s roles as women coping with their husbands’ secret lives in 45 Years (2015) and Hannah (2017) garnered particular praise. She received her first Oscar nomination, at the age of 69, for the former. The honor, however, was eclipsed by a controversial comment she had made to France’s Europe 1 radio in 2016. That was the second consecutive year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had given all 20 acting nominations to white actors, and there was a call to boycott the Oscars. Rampling said those calls were “racist against whites,” adding, “sometimes maybe Black actors didn’t deserve to make the short list.” That same evening she issued a statement saying, “I regret that my comments could have been misinterpreted. I simply meant to say that in an ideal world every performance will be given equal opportunities for consideration. Diversity in our industry is an important issue that needs to be addressed.” She later reflected that her earlier comment probably cost her the award.

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Later roles and other projects

Among Rampling’s later movies are Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two (2024). Other projects include a short memoir, Who I Am (2017), which she wrote with Christophe Bataille.