SAGs Flashback '08: Marion's Breakout Role

Prior to 2007, Marion Cotillard had a prevalent film career in France for over a decade. Then, she portrayed French music icon Edith Piaf in La Vie en rose. The film got her recognition from critics around the world, and led to incredible avail the ensuing awards season. It was a dream come true for her.

In 2008, the French actress was nominated at every major awards show on the circuit from the Critics' Choice Awards to the Oscars. In that pile of nominations was a SAG Awards nomination for Best Actress.

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"When I was a little girl, I used to watch a lot of American movies, so they really inspired me; they really gave me the desire to be an actress," she says to ET's former co-host Mark Steines on the red carpet. "To be here, to have a nomination amongst those amazing actresses, it is something huge for me."

While Cotillard was basking in a moment in her life that she had probably awaited since she was a young girl, there was a dark cloud hanging over that year's ceremony due to the ongoing Writers Guild strike and pending SAG negotiations that were trending towards a strike.

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That cloud wouldn't rain on Cotillard's parade, though.

"It's the first time for me that I live all this, so I'm enjoying every single minute of it," she says. "I'm not disappointed by how it would have been [without it]."

After winning a Golden Globe a few weeks prior, that twinkle in her eye also suggests that she may have had a premonition that she would be leaving the show with some hardware that night; however, she surprisingly did not.

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Nevertheless, she would go on to win an Academy Award shortly after. More importantly, she went on every filmmaker's radar, and soon landed a role in a major American film, Public Enemies.

Five years later, Cotillard is up for her fourth SAG nomination, this time for the French film Rust and Bone. Now that she's come full-circle, perhaps she'll leave this year's show with that heavy trophy in her hand.