Isabelle Huppert stands out among actresses due to her audacious choices of roles, both for films as well as for the theater. Her intelligence and intuition are evident in the parts she plays. Her renown as an actress is not limited to the French cinema but embraces Europe and the rest of the world.

This most mysterious of actresses likes to be photographed but she is not an easy subject. She offers herself to the eye of the camera yet remains secretive, almost absent. The great photographers of our time—Richard Avedon, Edouard Boubat, Guy Bourdin, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliot Erwitt, Lartigues, Annie Leibovitz, Steven Meisel, Helmut Newton, Sylvia Plachy, Marc Riboud, and Scavullo—took up the challenge. Huppert’s energy and strength are often shrouded behind a kind of melancholy, and these photographers have captured beautifully that contradictory quality. Not only a collection of gorgeous images, this haunting book also unveils the bond between the public image and the secret soul of this unique woman.

Elfriede Jelinek is a playwright and novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004.

Serge Toubina is a film historian and author. He is the former editor-in-chief of the Cahiers du Cinéma and current general director of the French Cinémathèque.

Susan Sontag was a noted writer, director, and human-rights activist.