Despite beginning her career as a child performer, Judith Godreche was not really well-known to US audiences until Patrice Leconte's "Ridicule" was released in 1996. The film introduced her smoky-eyed, Gallic sensuality to Americans as she essayed the role of Mathilde de Bellegarde, the impetuous proto-feminist who was not clever enough for the aristocracy that survived on barbed wit. The dark-haired beauty first appeared in films as Claudia Cardinale's daughter in "L'Ete prochain" (1982). At age 14, she left school to play her first screen lead in Benoit Jacquot's "Les Mendiants" (1986) and
