American actress most similar to Rampling?

I'll say Gena Rowlands who was talented, gorgeous and enigmatic and of course predates her so Rampling is maybe the non-American Rowlands - she literally had a fox face, she evokes a ferocious animal like Rampling evokes a mysterious cat ...............she is idolized by the French, a Greek husband ......she had been around a while before she started getting awards too like Rampling, there is something spectacularly American in her and yet not in a nauseating "America's Sweetheart" way - there's something "Alternative" to her too and the work she did and she had a style component too.

That second photo with her head back against Cassavettes? Alluring indeed. And she has one of the most perfect noses. 

How about this... Can y'all picture any American actress in a film about a woman in love with a chimpanzee? 

hahaha. Sorry Rampling fans. I do think she's great. But Rowlands is the greatest to me. Although I am missing me some Liv Ullmann lately. I need to have an Ullmann/Bergman marathon like I did once upon a time.

I guess the thing that differentiates them is Rampling's aura and Dunst all-American qualities -  how "otherworldly" and therefore non-American Rampling was on the surface - that's not the right word exactly but she was always somewhat misplaced on the surface - her story in "Asylum" is sort of her early career summed up, she doesn't seem to quite "fit". So that then deepened every part she was cast in, you had a preconception of the role because of the actor - not typecasting but complex casting - where actor trumps the role. 

That's hard to get - when an actor gets that they get all sorts of benefits from it - one of them is not actually having to do the work itself but letting audiences imagine them in other roles which then deepens what we've already established them as - an example:  how would Rampling have been in The Natural as Harriet Bird - well weird, but Rampling's weird too - so it'd have been great! - and things like that...........

The interviewer is quite right about the hard facade that slowly cracks - Dunst's work in Fargo has that and has it in an American way she doesn't seem to be doing anyone but herself (she isn't anybody else in On Becoming A God either)......... is she still doing the Campion film because you know that could be major at the exact right time and those ace roles don't come around much.

Well, maybe. I do want to see the naturally talented Kirsten with more Melancholia roles. I don't mean identical but as prominent, memorable, and impactful. I've said this before but she gave one of the best depictions of depression ever and believe me, I'm familiar with that world.

NY Times film critic Stephen Holden called Lauren Bacall the "Hollywood prototype" of Rampling - 


Yes! I think Holden hit the nail on the head with this comparison. 

pacinoyes - A few more things I found linking Rampling and Rowlands:

From film blog The Sheila Variations:

But it was 1974’s The Night Porter (with Dirk Bogarde opposite) that cemented my belief that she – along with Gena Rowlands – was the scariest actress of her generation. You don’t cuddle up to Charlotte Rampling. You don’t warm to Gena Rowlands. Actresses like those two are scary. Raw meat, on display. Flayed, whipped, beaten by life. Clinging with ripped fingernails to some ledge, laughing hysterically and wildly as they hang over the abyss. Their cover-ups are jagged, incomplete, their pain long-lasting, inseparable from the look behind their eyes.

French actress Marine Vacth (from Ozon's Jeune et jolie) mirrors Kirsten Dunst by naming them as her idols to Grazia:

Q: Is there an actress who represents a model for you?
A: "Today I admire professionals like the British Charlotte Rampling and the American Gena Rowlands, but I did not grow up dreaming of cinema: I have never felt the desire to identify myself with a diva."

If they were to swap one role each... I could totally see Rampling in Gloria and Rowlands in Stardust Memories (both from 1980).