Gainsbourg is the daughter of French singer, songwriter and actor Serge Gainsbourg and the British actress Jane Birkin. She grew up in the public eye not only because she had celebrity parents, but because she had celebrity parents who had never married, lived openly together and had a child. (They separated when Charlotte was nine years old.) She made her screen debut in 1983 as Catherine Deneuve's daughter in "Love Songs", a film about divorce. Two years later, director Claude Miller cast Gainsbourg as the tempest-tossed adolescent in "L'Effrontee", and before she was 15, Gainsbourg had won a Cesar, the French counterpart of the Oscar, for her performance. In 1989, American audience saw Gainsbourg for the first time in "The Little Thief", this time as a precocious teen. She has since appeared in several other films, including the British "The Cement Garden" (1993), directed by her uncle Andrew Birkin, and "Kung Fu Master!" (1987), written by and starring her mother. Gainsbourg also starred in the Paris production of David Mamet's "Oleanna" (1995).