Isabelle Huppert has sustained a reputation for unflinching explorations of sexuality and its vicissitudes. Yet while the themes with which she has widely become associated—sex, transgression, anti-psychology—are synonymous with a recent trend in European filmmaking, she occupies an uneasy relation to scholarly discourses surrounding the ‘cinéma du corps’. This disconnect informs the focus of this chapter, which turns to Huppert’s performances in The Piano Teacher, Abuse of Weakness, and Elle. Though the theoretical encounter between star studies and work on corporeal cinema presents a methodological antagonism, O’Dwyer argues that it reveals mutually illuminating ways to read Huppert’s performances, the cinematic mediation of extremity, and the signifying potential of star bodies. Tracing the spectacle of the suffering body across numerous scenes, ranging from sado-masochistic entanglement, to physiological deterioration, and sexual violence, this chapter explores how the imperilled star body accrues an intertextual density across an ever-growing body of film.