Early Life
Louis-Dreyfus was born Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus in New York City on January 13, 1961. Her mother, Judith, was a writer and special needs tutor, and her father, the billionaire Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, chaired Louis Dreyfus Energy Services. She is the great-great-granddaughter of Léopold Louis-Dreyfus, who in 1851 founded the Louis Dreyfus Group, a commodities and shipping multinational, which members of the family control to this day. Her paternal grandfather, Pierre Louis-Dreyfus (1908-2011), was president of the Louis Dreyfus Group; he was part of a prominent Alsatian Jewish family, and remained in France during World War II, fighting as a cavalry officer and later in the French Resistance. During this time, her father fled to America from France. Her paternal grandmother, Dolores (Neubauer), and her mother, were American. In 1962, one year after her birth, her parents divorced. After relocating to Washington, D.C. when Julia was eight, her mother married L. Thompson Bowles, Dean of the George Washington University Medical School.
Louis-Dreyfus spent her childhood in several states and countries in connection with her stepfather's work with Project HOPE, including Sri Lanka, Colombia and Tunisia. She graduated from the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland in 1979, and attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she studied theatre for several years before dropping out due to a professional acting job offer.
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