Elisa Tovati

Inspired by the likes of Juliette Gréco, Serge Gainsbourg, and Véronique Sanson, the multi-talented Elisa Tovati is one of the most successful French actresses to make the transition to the pop world. Born Elisa Touati to a French-Moroccan dentist father and Russian-Polish mother in Paris in 1976, she developed a passion for theater from a young age but got her first big break co-presenting Y'a Pas d'Lezard alongside Stephane Tapie as a teenager. After appearing in TV movies Premiers Baisers and Extreme Limite, she made her big-screen debut in Bigas Luna's Macho in 1993, whose spelling error in the film's credits inspired her to change her surname to Tovati. In 2001, she played Jose Garcia's girlfriend in the hit comedy La Verite Si Je Mens! 2 (a role she reprised in the 2012 third film) and a year later released her debut album, Ange Etrange. She followed it up in 2006 with Je Ne Mache Pas les Mots, the same year she married Mercury CEO Sébastien Saussez, and after starring alongside future Oscar winner Jean Dujardin in 99 Francs, she returned to the music scene in 2011. Her third album, Le Syndrome de Peter Pan, became the most successful of her career, spawning her first Top Ten hit and a Belgian number one with the Tom Dice collaboration "Il Nous Faut." ~ Jon O'Brien