Few actresses have made a screen debut as audacious as Stacy Martin’s turn in Lars von Trier’s two-part epic Nymphomaniac, a role that required immense trust in her director and thrust her into international attention while she was barely into her twenties.
Rather than being defined by that provocative start, Martin has spent the years since building a career distinguished by consistently ambitious, art-house collaborations with some of contemporary cinema’s boldest filmmakers.
Martin is a French actress known for her recurring creative partnership with director Brady Corbet, having appeared in his films The Childhood of a Leader, Vox Lux, and the Oscar-nominated The Brutalist.
Her filmography spans French, British, and American productions, reflecting a genuinely international career built on artistic risk-taking rather than mainstream franchise fame.
Her rise illustrates how a striking debut performance, however controversial, can serve as a launchpad for a durable, critically respected career defined by range rather than repetition.
Profile
| Full Name | Stacy Martin |
| Born | March 20, 1990 |
| Age | 36 years old |
| Birthplace | Paris, France |
| Nationality | French-British |
| Occupation | Actress, Model |
| Parents | René Martin (father, French, hairstylist), Annette Martin (mother, English) |
| Relationship Status | In a long-term relationship with composer Daniel Blumberg |
Early Life
Stacy Martin was born on March 20, 1990, in Paris, France, to a French father, René Martin, who worked as a hairstylist, and an English mother, Annette Martin.
Her multicultural upbringing extended further when the family relocated to Tokyo, Japan, when Martin was around seven years old.
She spent several formative years there before returning to France in her early teens, an experience that gave her fluency in both English and French and a broad, international outlook from a young age.
Education
At eighteen, Martin moved to London to study Media and Cultural Studies at the London College of Communication.
During her studies, she supported herself by working part-time as a model, an experience that would later intersect meaningfully with her acting career through campaigns with major fashion houses.
Career
Martin’s acting career began, almost without warning, when she was cast as the younger version of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s character Joe in Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac (2013), a graphic two-part drama exploring one woman’s sexual history.
The unconventional debut required Martin to work with a body double for some of the film’s most explicit sequences, and though the subject matter was provocative, her performance drew serious critical attention, earning her nominations for Best Actress at both the Robert Awards and the Bodil Awards in Denmark.
She was also named among BAFTA’s Breakthrough Brits of 2014, recognizing her as one of the year’s most promising new talents, and received the Rising Star Award at the British Academy Film Awards.
Off the back of her debut, Martin quickly built a substantial filmography. In 2015 alone, she appeared in Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise, Matteo Garrone’s Tale of Tales (which screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival), Joann Sfar’s The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun, and Nicolas Saada’s Taj Mahal. That same year marked the beginning of her long-running creative partnership with director Brady Corbet, appearing in his acclaimed debut feature The Childhood of a Leader.
In 2017, Martin starred alongside Louis Garrel in Michel Hazanavicius’s Redoubtable, which screened in competition at Cannes, and appeared in Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World. The following year brought Amanda, in which she starred opposite Vincent Lacoste, as well as Treat Me Like Fire, selected for the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.
Martin’s collaboration with Corbet continued with a role in his 2018 film Vox Lux, and she went on to feature in The Evening Hour and Lovers, both released in 2020, alongside the horror film The Night House. On television, she gained further visibility as Juliette Voclain in the BBC One series The Serpent (2021), a true-crime drama that brought her performance to a broader mainstream audience.
In the years since, Martin’s filmography has continued to expand with a mix of French and international productions, including the 2023 comedy Baby Love, in which she played one half of a lesbian couple, and the Cannes-premiered biographical drama about painter Pierre Bonnard, Pierre Bonnard and Martha. Her most high-profile recent role came in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (2024), starring alongside Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, a sweeping immigration drama that received significant critical acclaim and multiple award nominations. She followed this with roles in The Little Island (2025) and The Testament of Ann Lee (2025).
Awards & Nominations
- Robert Award nomination, Best Actress, Nymphomaniac
- Bodil Award nomination, Best Actress, Nymphomaniac
- BAFTA Breakthrough Brits honoree (2014)
- BAFTA Rising Star Award recognition
Social Media
- Instagram: shares selected updates on her film projects and fashion collaborations
Personal Life
Stacy Martin has been in a long-term relationship with English artist and Oscar-winning composer Daniel Blumberg. The couple began dating when Martin was nineteen years old, shortly before her breakout role in Nymphomaniac. They experienced a significant breakup around 2016 after seven years together, an experience that reportedly inspired much of the melancholic material on Blumberg’s 2018 solo album Minus, before the couple eventually reunited. They now live together in London and have collaborated professionally, including on Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, for which Blumberg composed the score. Martin was raised in a Christian household and has spoken about the multicultural nature of her upbringing across France, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
Net Worth
Stacy Martin’s net worth has been estimated at around two million dollars, accumulated through more than a decade of film and television work across French, British, and international productions, as well as modeling campaigns for major fashion labels including Rag & Bone and Miu Miu, for whom she also served as the face of the brand’s first fragrance.
Notable Works & Achievements
Filmography
- Nymphomaniac: Vol. I & II (2013) — Young Joe
- The Childhood of a Leader (2015)
- High-Rise (2015) — Faye
- Tale of Tales (2015)
- Redoubtable (2017)
- All the Money in the World (2017)
- Amanda (2018)
- Vox Lux (2018)
- The Serpent (2021) — Juliette Voclain
- The Brutalist (2024)
- The Testament of Ann Lee (2025)
Conclusion
Stacy Martin has transformed what began as one of contemporary cinema’s most talked-about debut performances into a genuinely distinguished career defined by consistent collaboration with celebrated auteurs. Her enduring creative partnership with Brady Corbet, culminating in the Oscar-nominated The Brutalist, speaks to an actress trusted by serious filmmakers to anchor demanding, layered material.
As her filmography continues to grow more ambitious with each passing year, Stacy Martin’s career stands as proof that a provocative beginning need not define an actress, it can simply be the starting point for a much longer artistic journey.
Redefining a Debut on Her Own Terms
Few screen debuts carry the weight that Stacy Martin’s did in Nymphomaniac, a role that could easily have overshadowed everything that followed. What has distinguished Martin’s career in the years since is her consistent refusal to let that early notoriety define the trajectory of her work. Rather than pursuing roles that traded on the provocative reputation of her first film, she gravitated almost immediately toward auteur-driven, formally ambitious projects, a pattern that speaks to a clear-eyed sense of the kind of actress she wanted to become.
Her ongoing collaboration with director Brady Corbet stands as the clearest thread running through her filmography. Beginning with his 2015 debut feature The Childhood of a Leader and continuing through Vox Lux and the Oscar-nominated The Brutalist, Martin has become one of Corbet’s most trusted recurring collaborators, appearing in projects that share a commitment to formally rigorous, historically minded storytelling. That her partner, composer Daniel Blumberg, scored The Brutalist adds a further layer of creative intimacy to her involvement in Corbet’s work, blurring the line between personal and professional collaboration in a way relatively rare among major awards-season productions.
An International Career Built on Range
Martin’s filmography reflects a genuinely pan-European sensibility, moving fluidly between French productions, British television, and American studio and independent films without appearing to favor one industry over another. Her role in the BBC’s The Serpent introduced her to a broader mainstream television audience through a prestige true-crime format, while her continued presence in French cinema, including Baby Love and the Cannes-selected drama about painter Pierre Bonnard, has kept her closely tied to her home country’s film industry even as her international profile has grown.
This deliberate spread across markets and formats has allowed Martin to avoid the kind of career plateau that sometimes affects performers strongly associated with a single controversial breakout role. Instead, by the time The Brutalist reached international audiences and awards consideration in 2024, Martin was being discussed not as the actress from Nymphomaniac, but as an established collaborator of one of contemporary cinema’s most acclaimed young directors, a repositioning achieved through more than a decade of consistently ambitious creative choices rather than any single reinvention moment.