- Born
- Height5′ 7″ (1.70 m)
- Hélène Cardona is a multilingual actress, producer and writer born in Paris and raised across Europe. She is developing Primate, a co-written adaptation of John M. FitzGerald's novel, and Where the Heart Meets the Sea, adapted from Kimbra Drake's novel, which she optioned. With an extensive career spanning film, television, and voice acting, she has appeared in Chocolat (2000), The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014), Star Trek: Discovery (2017), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), World War Z (2013), Jurassic World (2015), and Mumford (1999). She recurs as Monique in Upload (2020), is the Computer Voice in Heroes Reborn (2015) and her many voice characters include the Cerebro in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), Happy Feet Two (2011), Muppets Most Wanted (2014), and Tevina Veth'aal in Starfield: Shattered Space (2024).
For Serendipity (2001), she co-wrote with Peter Chelsom and Alan Silvestri the song Lucienne, which she also sang. Her many producing credits include the award-winning documentary Femme (2013).
Hélène has French, Spanish, and US passports. Her mother is Greek, and father Spanish. She has lived and worked across Europe, North Africa, and North America.
Hélène won Best Actress for Bedtime Stories: Tales of Love and Hate (2024) at the 2025 Madrid International Movie Awards and Brazil International Film Festival, and Best Supporting Actress for The Dead Woman at the 2024 Vegas Movie Awards.
As Arlette in Caralique, she earned Best Actress at the 2023 Idyllwild International Film Festival, the Vanguard Award at the 2022 Scotland International Festival of Cinema, and Best Supporting Actress at the 2023 Lady Filmmakers Festival and 2022 Beyond the Curve International Film Festival in Paris.
As Venus in Halo, she won over a dozen international awards including Best Actress at the Tokyo and V.I.Z. Film Festivals, and the Jean-Luc Godard Award at the Cult Critics Movie Awards.
Hélène trained at the Actors' Studio with Ellen Burstyn, Sandra Seacat, and Susan Batson and performed on stage at the Players Club, The Actors' Studio, and with The Naked Angels and Ubu Repertory Theater Companies in New York.
Fluent in six languages - English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Greek - Hélène earned her Master's in American Literature from the Sorbonne with a thesis on Henry James. She graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York and the Geneva Music Conservatory as a pianist and dancer.
A celebrated poet and literary translator, Hélène is the author of 8 books, including 3 bilingual collections and 5 translations of works by José Manuel Cardona, Gabriel Arnou-Laujeac, Maram Al-Masri, Walt Whitman, and Dorianne Laux. She is the recipient of over 20 literary honors and awards, including the Independent Press Award, an Albertine and FACE Foundation Prize, and the iWoman Global Award. Her own poetry has been translated into 20 languages.
Hélène is passionate about stories that transcend borders and identities, and is drawn to characters who inhabit the liminal spaces where cultures, emotions, and imagination meet.
Hélène is a voting member of BAFTA, SAG-AFTRA, and the European Film Academy, and a member of the Alliance of Women Directors and the Parlement des écrivaines francophones.
She is also a language coach, teacher, dream analyst, lifelong animal lover, yoga practitioner, dancer and equestrian.
- IMDb mini biography by: Mythborne
- Gender / Gender identityFemale
- Pronounsshe/her
- Her laughter
- Turquoise green eyes
- Mischievous smile
- Hélène trained as a dancer at the Music Conservatory in Geneva and the Salle Pleyel in Paris. She danced in Vera Krylova's Dance Company at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and continued training in New York.
- For Serendipity (2001), Hélène Cardona co-wrote with director Peter Chelsom and composer Alan Silvestri the song Lucienne, which she also sang.
- Sydney Pollack based the Nicole Kidman character in The Interpreter (2005) in part on Hélène Cardona's life by making her a Sorbonne linguist and a musician.
- Hélène's father is José Manuel Cardona, the renowned poet from Ibiza, Spain.
- Hélène's poetry collection Dreaming My Animal Selves won the USA Best Book Award in Poetry, the Pinnacle Book Award for Best Bilingual Poetry Book and the Readers' Favorite Book Award in Poetry. It was a Finalist for the International Book Awards and the Julie Suk Award.
- We are consciousness wanting to expand.
- [on Sandra Seacat and dream work] When I trained with Sandra Seacat at the Actors Studio in New York, she introduced me to a particular form of dream work. You could call it Jungian. I have kept doing this work for many years now. It's very therapeutic, a more holistic approach to medicine. And it can also be used to develop a character in a play or movie. You dig into yourself to find the answers. In the dream you are connected to your inner self and to the divine.
- I write as a form of self-expression, fulfillment, transcendence, healing, to transmute pain and experience into beauty.
- For me, poetry is a process of self revelation, an exploration of hidden dimensions in myself, and it is also at the same time a way to become myself, a process of individuation I try to create throughout my life - a profound experience of the fundamental interconnection of all in the universe. Moreover, writing is cathartic as it extends a search for peace, for serenity, rooted in a desire to transcend and reconcile the fundamental duality I see in life. Ultimately, I seek expansion of consciousness.
- Expressing yourself with art... whatever your experiences have been, you put them to use. There is a transformative process, a healing process, and by creating a piece of art, you heal yourself, and then you heal others because they recognize themselves in the stories you tell. And that's the beauty of it. That's why we go to the theater, because it's such a transcendental and therapeutic experience. That's why we go see movies, that's why we love art in general.... The symbols are there. And we respond to symbol and myth. This is the way we tell stories, this is the way we move forward in life...
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