Born on February 20, 1974 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Ophélie Winter is the daughter of Catherine – Cathy – Fefeu, model, and David-Alexandre Winter, Dutch singer known for the hit Oh! Lady Mary (1969). Her parents separated in 1976, her father went into exile in the United States. She grows up in Neuilly-sur-Seine, as a real tomboy she is inseparable from her elder brother, Mickaël (born in 1972). At the age of 6, she goes on stage for the first time and records her first single in 1984, La Chanson des klaxons. After a second title, Poil de Carotte, in 1987, with mixed success, she attends the Saint-James high school in Neuilly.
But in 1991 she abandoned her studies to follow in her mother’s footsteps and started modeling. She decided to go back to modeling lingerie and to get back in touch with producers in order to get back in touch with singing. In 1993, she met the singer Prince and together they recorded a cover of the hit The Most Beautiful Girl in the World in Minneapolis.
In the fall of 1994, the M6 channel offered Ophélie Winter the presentation of a weekly music program, the Hit Machine. She became the channel’s star host, and for three years she hosted Dance Machine Club, Coming Next, Ophelie Street and Ophelie Show. In 1995, she took advantage of this popularity to release the single Dieu m’a donné la foi, which became the hit of her album No Soucy! which sold 600,000 copies and was certified platinum. She left the management of her business to her mother and created with her a production company, Winahol.
Curious to discover other worlds, she made her first film appearance in 1996 in Claude Lelouch’s Hommes, femmes : mode d’emploi. The following year, she landed the lead roles in Philippe Muyl’s Tout doit disparaître and Jérôme Cornuau’s Bouge! The reception of her second album, Privacy, in 1998 was mixed; sold 275,000 copies, but the concerts and tour initially planned were cancelled. After the partial failure of her show on TF1, Ophélie Winter Show, in 2000, she returns to the big screen with Les Jolies Choses by Gilles Paquet-Brenner (2001).
In 2002, she is back in the stores with a new opus, Explicit Lyrics. Despite the relative flop of this third album, the single Sache, from which it is taken, managed to make its way into the Top 50. In 2004, health problems kept him away from the studios. In September 2007, after a few years of absence from the small screen, Ophélie returned to M6, the channel she started with, to join the jury for the 4th season of Popstars. Her fourth album, in 2009, Resurrection, which she produced under her label Double you, did not find its audience. The singer has become rarer since then. In 2013, we find her alongside Thierry Lhermitte in an episode of the series Doc Martin on TF1. In September 2014, she is part of the cast of the show Danse avec les stars on TF1.
On the private side, after a romance with the singer MCSolaar in the late 90s and with the actor Alain Chabat (2002-2003), she remains today discreet about her love affairs. In October 2019, Rolf – Rudolph of his real name – van Dalen reveals in an interview that he shared the singer’s life for four years.
She’s not really the social media type. But when it comes to paying tribute to the missing persons whose paths she has crossed paths, it
Keep In Touch
