Her career could have been so much greater

I won't out right say she hasn't had a good solid acting career. But she definitely didn't live up to her early potential, she had everything to succeed. She's a great actress and not many actresses around that time looked as beautiful as Irene.

From 1987 until 1998, she had a pretty damn good run. She made a massive splash in a small role as a the young piano teacher in Lois Malle's masterpiece Au Revoir Les Enfants, then had the lead role in two of Krzysztof Kieślowski Masterpiece's in The Double Life of Veronique and Three Colors Red. She even did some English Speaking roles with the Underrated 1993 children film Secret Garden and also a good version of Othello. She worked on Michelangelo Antonioni's last film Beyond the Clouds. I'd say only Juilette Binoche and Isabelle Huppert were on a better role in terms of Actresses in European cinema. Irene did all this while still under 30.

The most famous film she turned down was Pulp Fiction (she was supposed to play Bruce Willis girlfriend part which went to Maria de Medeiros). She dipped her toe into Hollywood with Fugitive sequel U.S Marshalls but once the 00's came around, she's never reached the heights of the late 80's/90's. Hollywood never quite didn't know what to do with her and some of her choices became very questionable. Plus she got married and had children but it didn't stop her working that much. She's got a decent part in TV show The Affair but aside from that nothing really stands out on her C.V to match her early work and she seems to be working more on stage now.