She was born Paulette Germaine Riva in Cheniménil, France. She grew up in Remiremont. Riva was the only child of Jeanne (née Nourdin) who descended from a family of Lorrainian and Alsatian farmers and Alfredo Riva, an Italian sign painter from Lombardy.
Other works.
In 2013, Riva won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award and the César Award for her lead role in Michael Haneke"s Amour as Anne Laurent, and was nominated for the Academy Award for the same role. She had previously been nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award in 1960 for Hiroshima mon amour, and had won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1962 for Thérèse Desqueyroux. Her best known role was as Elle in Hiroshima mon amour (1959) directed by Alain Resnais and written by Marguerite Duras, for which Duras was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. She appeared in Kapò (1959), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film from Italy, Adua and her Friends, (1960) starring Simone Signoret, Leon Morin, Priest (1961) opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, Thérèse Desqueyroux (1962), Thomas the Imposter (1965), Three Colours: Blue (1993) as the mother of Juliette Binoche, and Venus Beauty Institute (1999) alongside Micheline Presle. In 2012 she received rave reviews and an Academy Award nomination for her role opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant in Amour. Riva tied with Lawrence for the Los Angeles Film Critics Best Actress Award, and also won the NSFC Best Actress Award among numerous other mentions for her performance.
