The César Award for Best Actress (French: César de la meilleure actrice) is one of the César Awards, presented annually by the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma to recognize the outstanding performance in a leading role of an actress who has worked within the French film industry during the year preceding the ceremony. Nominees and winner are selected via a run-off voting by all the members of the Académie.
As of 2019, 82 actresses have been nominated in the category, with a total of 34 different winners. The average age at first nomination is 36 and the average age of winners at first win is 39.
Adjani also holds the records for most César Awards in an acting category and for most Césars in a single artistic category. She is followed with 4 Césars by Dominique Blanc (1 Best Actress César and 3 Best Supporting Actress Césars) and Nathalie Baye (2 Best Actress Césars and 2 Best Supporting Actress Césars).
Isabelle Huppert holds the record of most nominations with 14. Including Best Supporting Actress, Huppert has been nominated a total of 16 times, which makes her the overall most-nominated female performer.
Virginie Efira hold the record of most consecutive nominations with 4 (2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024).
Cécile de France is the only actress to have been nominated for two different roles the same year, in 2007 for Avenue Montaigne and for When I Was a Singer. The Académie has since modified the nomination rules to ensure that no one could receive more than one individual nomination by category.
Nathalie Baye (Best Supporting Actress in 1981 and 1982, Best Actress in 1983 and 2006)
Annie Girardot (Best Actress in 1977, Best Supporting Actress in 1996 and 2002),
Dominique Blanc (Best Supporting Actress in 1991, 1993 and 1999, Best Actress in 2001),
Karin Viard (Best Actress in 2000, Best Supporting Actress in 2003 and 2019),
Marion Cotillard (Best Supporting Actress in 2005, Best Actress in 2008),
Emmanuelle Devos (Best Actress in 2002, Best Supporting Actress in 2010),
Adèle Haenel (Best Supporting Actress in 2014, Best Actress in 2015),
Catherine Frot (Best Supporting Actress in 1997, Best Actress in 2016).
Fanny Ardant (Best Actress in 1997, Best Supporting Actress in 2020)
Nathalie Baye is the only actress with multiple wins in both categories. She is also the only performer to have won an acting César in three consecutive years, in 1981, 1982 and 1983.
There have been only two posthumous nominations for any acting César and both occurred in the Best Actress category. Romy Schneider was nominated in 1983 for The Passerby, seven months after her death possibly by suicide. Pascale Ogier died of a drug overdose at 25, three months before receiving a nomination for Full Moon in Paris in 1985.
Romy Schneider is the only actress to have been presented a posthumous Honorary César, in 2008. Actor Alain Delon presented the César, as the date also corresponded to the forty years of the iconic film La Piscine in which they starred together. During the standing ovation, he turned towards a giant portrait of the actress and declared in German that she was the love of his life.
Following the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma (AATC)'s practice, the films below are listed by year of ceremony, which corresponds to the year following the film's year of release. For example, the César for Best Actress of 2010 was awarded on February 27, 2010 for a performance in a film released between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009.
Actresses are selected via a two-round vote: first round to choose the nominees, second round to designate the winner. All the members of the Académie, without regard to their branch, are eligible to vote on both rounds. The number of nominees, initially set to four, was expanded to five in 1984 and then to seven in 2012.
Winners are listed first in bold, followed by the other nominees in alphabetic order.
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