Biography

Anamaria Vartolomei was born on April 9, 1999 in Bacau, Romania. She is an actress, known for Happening (2021), The Count of Monte Cristo (2024) and Medusa (2021).

In 2024, she played the role of Maria Schneider in the biopic Being Maria (2024) while Sofia Masson played the same role in the same year in the biopic Waltzing with Brando (2024).

[2025 interview] I'm Romanian, and I've spoken two languages all my life, so maybe that's why I don't see my career developing only in France. Also, I have dreams about European cinema. For example, I've often mentioned Cristian Mungiu, with whom I wanted to work. He's just produced Traffic (2024), a film by Romanian director Teodora Mihai in which I star. I really wanted to work in Romania, in films close to my roots, my culture, but I'm also very sensitive to Iranian and Korean cinema, to that of Bong Joon Ho.

[2025 interview] It's an honour to keep doing the thing I love most, which is acting. I'm 25 now. I started when I was 10. I've been working for 15 years. It sounds weird when I say it. I just started by doing theatre in my school because they offered a class after school and I followed my friend. My father works in construction. He worked for a theatre actress who gave us the address for a casting website. And that's when we found My Little Princess (2011). My parents were very present, because they're not from the industry and they didn't know how it works. They wanted to protect me. They were very supportive. And then I grew up, and when I was 15 or 16 I discovered other movies with Isabelle Huppert. I didn't know who she was. I'd love to do another movie with her now.

I didn't want to rush into adult roles, because sometimes you receive a script and don't feel ready to play it. I just tried to play characters that resonated with me. I was sort of reborn for Happening (2021) as an actress. It was my first really deep character at 19 or 20 years old. I was playing a woman dealing with pregnancy, her body and femininity.

We are mirrors of society, of our times. Like directors, we have a responsibility. I'm not saying that we're obliged to make only socially or politically committed films. We can also choose entertainment, adventure or epics - like The Count of Monte Cristo (2024), for example. But I'm a young woman who lives with the times, and I like the idea of passing on a message through each character. I also draw on the characters' strength and commitment. I've retained a lot of Annie Ernaux from Happening (2021), and Maria Schneider as well. It's not just feminism; it's humanism.

The shooting of Jessica Palud's Being Maria (2024), a film about the actress Maria Schneider, and the promotion that followed, raised a lot of questions in my mind about the place of the actor, about power. Isn't directing other people actually a form of manipulation? Maria's situation in Last Tango in Paris (1972) was unusual. It was her first major role. Bertolucci was the first director to look at her in a different way. She was acting with Marlon Brando. She had no idea they could go so far and betray her. It destroyed her. After that, she found it difficult to trust people for the rest of her life. It got me thinking, and not just about men's violence against women. It made me wonder about freedom. And I don't think you can be totally free as an actor, even if you surround yourself with as many kind people as possible.