Elisa Tovati

Drawing from the influence of Juliette Gréco, Serge Gainsbourg, and Véronique Sanson, multi-talented Elisa Tovati ranks among the most successful French actresses who crossed into pop music. She entered the world as Elisa Touati in Paris in 1976, the daughter of a French-Moroccan dentist father and a Russian-Polish mother, and nurtured an early passion for theater. Her initial major opportunity arrived during her teenage years when she co-hosted Y'a Pas d'Lezard with Stephane Tapie. Roles in the television films Premiers Baisers and Extreme Limite preceded her cinematic introduction in Bigas Luna’s Macho in 1993; a misspelling of her name in the credits prompted the permanent shift to Tovati. In 2001 she portrayed Jose Garcia’s girlfriend in the hit comedy La Verite Si Je Mens! 2, a part she later reprised in the franchise’s 2012 third installment, and released her first album, Ange Etrange, the following year. She issued the follow-up Je Ne Mache Pas les Mots in 2006, the same year she wed Mercury CEO Sébastien Saussez. After appearing opposite future Oscar winner Jean Dujardin in 99 Francs, she reentered the music arena in 2011. The resulting third album, Le Syndrome de Peter Pan, proved her most successful release to date, yielding both her first Top Ten single and a Belgian number one in the Tom Dice duet “Il Nous Faut.”