Juliette Binoche's stellar career in pictures

The European Film Awards not only highlight Europe's cinematic gems of the year, but also hand out two honorary prizes. Along with the Lifetime Achievement Award, presented this year to German director Werner Herzog, the European Achievement in World Cinema award recognizes the impressive career of French actress Juliette Binoche, who has appeared in more than 60 feature films.

Binoche, born in 1964 in Paris, started out in theater. Her first minor film roles were already with renowned directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Doillon. She took the lead for the first time in Andre Techine's "Rendez-Vous," playing a young actress from the province trying to make it in Paris. It led to her first Cesar nomination for best actress, one of France's highest film honors.

Four years later, Binoche was already starring in international films, such as the US drama directed by Philip Kaufman and adapted from Milan Kundera's novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." She shone alongside Daniel Day-Lewis in this portrayal of Czechoslovak artistic and intellectual life during the Prague Spring protest movement of 1968.

Juliette Binoche has always had good taste in selecting memorable roles. At the beginning of the 1990s, she co-starred with Denis Lavant in one of the cult films of the decade, Leo Carax's "The Lovers on the Bridge." Along with various award nominations, she obtained her first European Film Award for the role.

She demonstrated once again her strong role-picking skills by starring in Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Three Colors" trilogy of films inspired by the French Revolutionary ideals and the country's tricolor flag. Pictured above is the first in the series, "Three Colors: Blue." By then, Binoche's reputation as one of the top stars of European cinema was already firmly established.

Reinforcing her renown as an international movie star, Binoche starred in the international hit "The English Patient," based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje and directed by Anthony Minghella. With her performance as a French-Canadian nurse during World War II, she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress — one of the few non-Americans to have been honored with the prize.

After a few lighter films, including the charming comedy "Chocolat" (2000) with Johnny Depp, Juliette Binoche worked twice with Austrian director Michael Haneke during the early 2000s. Her performance alongside Daniel Auteuil in "Hidden" (also known as "Cache") was particularly impressive. They played a couple confronted with anonymous surveillance tapes sent to their home.

Binoche also appeared in a cinematic experiment by renowned Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami. "Shirin" is told through close-ups of women watching a film retelling the story of a mythological Persian romance. Among the different notable Iranian actresses in those close-ups was also the French star.

Another courageous and daring performance: In a film by Polish director Malgoska Szumowska, Binoche portrayed a journalist for the French "Elle" magazine who is writing an article on prostitution. Her interviews with empowered women in the sex industry lead her to revisit her own sexual needs.

In "Cosmopolis," by Canadian star filmmaker David Cronenberg, Binoche once again took on a role that allowed her to play up her erotic charisma. The film is mostly set in the luxury limousine of a billionaire played by Robert Pattinson. The French actress is one of different passengers during a drive through New York City.

Relationships, sexuality and love are also the core themes of the romantic drama "Let the Sunshine In" (or "Bright Sunshine In"). Binoche plays a divorced Parisian artist and mother of a child who is facing disappointment in her love life. It is a strong female role in a film by one of the most important French filmmakers of the present, Claire Denis.

Her latest major role was in a movie that served as the opening film of the Venice Film Festival. In "The Truth," by award-winning Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, she portrayed a daughter in a problematic relationship with her mother, played by another French acting legend, Catherine Deneuve.