Life and Career
Assayas's father was French director/screenwriter Jacques Rémy (1910–1981). Assayas started his career in the industry by helping him. He ghostwrote episodes for TV shows his father was working on when his health failed.
He made his debut in 1986, after directing some short films and writing for the influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma.
Assayas's film Cold Water was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival.
His biggest hit to date has been Irma Vep, starring Hong Kong star Maggie Cheung, which manages to be a tribute both to French director Louis Feuillade and to Hong Kong cinema.
While working at Cahiers du cinéma, Assayas wrote lovingly about European film directors he admires but also about Asian directors. One of his films, HHH: A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-Hsien, is a documentary about Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien.
He married Hong Kong movie actress Maggie Cheung in 1998. They divorced in 2001, but their relationship remained amicable, and in 2004 Cheung made her award-winning film Clean with him.
He married actress-director Mia Hansen-Løve. They met when Hansen-Løve, seventeen at the time, starred in Assayas's 1998 feature Late August, Early September, but " didn't get together until was 20".
He directed and co-wrote the acclaimed 2010 French television miniseries Carlos, about the life of the terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez. The actor Édgar Ramírez won the César Award for Most Promising Actor in 2011 for his performance as Carlos.
In April 2011, it was announced that he would be a member of the jury for the main competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
His 2012 film, Something in the Air, was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 69th Venice International Film Festival. Assayas won the Osella for Best Screenplay at Venice.
Read more about this topic: Olivier Assayas
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