Clémence Poésy 2004 Gunpowder, Treason CineFrench

  • 8 years ago
Clémence Poésy was born Clémence Guichard in Paris in 1982. She took her mother's maiden name, Poésy, as her stage name. She attended an alternative school for most of her education, but spent her last year at L'École alsacienne.

She trained at the "Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique", with her first roles being for French TV series between 1997 and 1999, Un homme en colère (1997) and Les monos (1999). Her first feature film was a German production, Olgas Sommer (2002), in 2002 and her second the 2003 French production, Welcome to the Roses (2003).

Her first English speaking feature was as Mary, Queen of Scots, in the 2004 Gunpowder, Treason & Plot (2004) TV movie, for which she won the 2005 FIPA for best actress.

Since then she has starred in many films, the most notable being In Bruges (2008) (2008), which is probably the start of her worldwide recognition, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011), the US TV series Gossip Girl (2007) and the English TV mini-series, Birdsong (2012) (2012). All of these have shown her to be very capable of roles in multiple languages, periods and roles.

She is known for her natural beauty, devoid of make-up and cosmetics, and she herself says that she does not like using them.


Gunpowder, Treason & Plot is a 2004 BBC miniseries loosely based upon the lives of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her son James VI of Scotland. The writer Jimmy McGovern tells the story behind the Gunpowder Plot in two parts, each centred on one of the monarchs.

Directed by Gillies MacKinnon and filmed in Romania with a key Scottish crew, the first film dramatizes the relationship between Mary, Queen of Scots, played by French actress Clémence Poésy, and her third husband, James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell played by Kevin McKidd. Scottish actor Robert Carlyle stars as James VI in the second part of the series, which concentrates on the Gunpowder Plot, planned by Guy Fawkes, to blow up the Houses of Parliament in order to rid the nation of a Protestant monarch to be replaced by a Catholic one.

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