He starred in many classic films of European cinema, and worked with many prominent auteur directors, including Roger Vadim, Costa-Gavras, Claude Lelouch, Claude Chabrol, Bernardo Bertolucci, Éric Rohmer, François Truffaut, Krzysztof Kieślowski, and Michael Haneke.

[2][3] After touring in the early 1950s in several theater productions, his first motion picture appearance came in 1955, and the following year he gained stardom with his performance opposite Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman.

In Italy, he was always dubbed into Italian, and he worked with Italian directors including Sergio Corbucci in The Great Silence, Valerio Zurlini in Violent Summer and The Desert of the Tartars, Ettore Scola in La terrazza, Bernardo Bertolucci in The Conformist, and Dino Risi in The Easy Life.

Following this, he starred in François Truffaut's final film, Confidentially Yours, and reprised his best-known role in the sequel A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later (Un homme et une femme, 20 ans dejà, 1986).

[7] Trintignant said he chose film projects on the basis of the director and said of Haneke that "he has the most complete mastery of the cinematic discipline, from technical aspects like sound and photography to the way he handles actors".

[7] On 20 July 2018, Trintignant announced his retirement from cinema,[8] but, in March 2019, he accepted a role in Claude Lelouch's film The Best Years of a Life (Les plus belles annees d'une vie), a follow-up to A Man and a Woman and its sequel A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later.

[12] Another uncle, Maurice Trintignant (1917–2005), was a Formula One driver who twice won the Monaco Grand Prix as well as the 24 hours of Le Mans.

She was killed at age 41 by her boyfriend, rock musician Bertrand Cantat, in a hotel room in Vilnius, Lithuania.