Binoche's father was a sculptor and a theatre director, and her mother was a teacher and an actress. After completing her general education, she studied acting at the Paris Conservatoire and received private instruction from Vera Gregh, a renowned teacher of film acting. During the late 1970s Binoche appeared onstage in Paris, and in the first half of the 1980s she acted in small film roles and on French television. Her first breakthrough came through renowned director Jean-Luc Godard (Godard, Jean-Luc), who wrote into the screenplay of his Je vous salue, Marie (1985; Hail Mary) a part expressly for her.

In 1986 Binoche won the Romy-Schneider Prize, awarded by French journalists to the outstanding actress of the year, for her portrayal of Nina, a provincial woman aspiring to be an actress in Paris, in André Téchiné's Rendez-vous (1985). She made two films with the French director Léos Carax, Mauvais sang (1986; Bad Blood) and Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991; Lovers on the Pont-Neuf), over the next few years. In 1988 she earned international acclaim as a woman married to a philanderer in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, her first English-language film. Binoche's performance was highlighted by her ability to relate a range of emotions without speaking or falling into cliché.

Binoche experienced a great deal of success in the United States throughout the 1990s and 2000s. She won an Academy Award for best supporting actress for her portrayal of Hana, a French Canadian nurse stationed in Italy during World War II, in The English Patient (1996). She starred in the successful romantic comedy Chocolat (2000), playing opposite Johnny Depp (Depp, Johnny), and later appeared in both French- and English-language films, including Caché (2005; Hidden), Bee Season (2005), Breaking and Entering (2006), and Dan in Real Life (2007).