Eva Ionesco

French actress and director

Eva Ionesco (born 18 July 1965) is a French actress and filmmaker. She is the daughter of photographer Irina Ionesco and came to international prominence as a child model after being featured in her mother's works.

Ionesco was born to photographer Irina Ionesco, a Frenchwoman of Romanian descent, who had a relationship with a Hungarian man who worked in the military. Prior to Ionesco's birth, her mother had worked as a contortionist as she had come from a family of circus performers on her maternal side. Her parents separated when she was 3 at which point Ionesco became estranged from her father. In 1977 her mother lost custody of her and Ionesco lived for a time with the parents of footwear designer Christian Louboutin who had already left home. From the age of 13 Ionesco became a regular club goer at Le Palace along with Christian Louboutin and Edwige Belmore and also developed a drug habit. She was in and out of various foster homes until an older boyfriend of hers took custody of her at the age of 16.

At the age of 5, Eva became her mother's favorite photo model. Irina Ionesco's erotic photographs of her young daughter Eva have been a source of controversy since they first appeared in the 1970s. Eva also modeled for other photographers such as Jacques Bourboulon. She is the youngest model ever to appear in a Playboy nude pictorial, since she was featured at age 11 in the October 1976 issue of the Italian edition of the magazine in a set by Bourboulon. In that picture, she posed nude at a beach. Another of her nude pictorials, in the November 1978 issue of the Spanish edition of Penthouse, was a selection of her mother's photographs. She also appeared on the cover page of Der Spiegel at the age of 12 completely nude. The issue was later expunged from the magazine's records. In the 1980s, Ionesco attended the prestigious acting school Amandiers, directed by Patrice Chéreau and fr. She made her film début at the age of 11 in 1976, playing a child in Roman Polanski's film The Tenant. A short time later she was cast in films of the mid 1970s such as Maladolescenza (also known as Puppy Love). Eva claimed her story served as inspiration for Louis Malle's film Pretty Baby. Ionesco again paired with Isabelle Huppert for her next film, Golden Youth, about a young couple in Paris who begin to spend time with a much older and wealthier couple.

In 2015 Ionesco's husband Simon Liberati released a book about their courtship and her childhood called Eva. In 2017 Ionesco released her first book, Innocence, which dealt with her fractured relationship with her father.

Since the time in which her mother lost custody of her for repeatedly photographing or allowing Ionesco to be photographed by others completely nude, Ionesco has been engaged in protracted court battles with her mother to censor and reclaim the images taken of her as a child. She tried three times to sue her mother for emotional distress, and the trial is still going on through various courts in France. In 1998 the French police confiscated from her mother's apartment hundreds of photographs in which she appears at the age of five in suggestive poses and in complete nudity.

Ionesco has a son, Lukas Ionesco, born in 1995. Since 2013, she has been married to author Simon Liberati.