Isabelle Yasmina Adjani was born on 27 June 1955 in the
17th arrondissement of Paris, to Mohammed Cherif Adjani, an
Algerian Kabyle father from Constantine, and Emma Augusta "Gusti" Schweinberger, a
German Catholic mother from
Bavaria.
[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
"Gusti" met Adjani's father, Mohammed Adjani, near the end of World War II, when he was in the French Army. They married and she returned with him to Paris, not speaking a word of French.
[8][9] She asked him to take Cherif as his first name as it sounded more "American".
[10]
Isabelle grew up
bilingual, speaking French and German fluently,
[11][12][13] in
Gennevilliers, a northwestern suburb of
Paris, where her father worked in a garage.
[14] After winning a school recitation contest, Adjani began acting by the age of 12 in amateur theater. She successfully passed her
baccalauréat and was auditing classes at the
University of Vincennes in 1976