Hermine Poitou is a French graphic designer and the wife of actor David Thewlis, who played Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter films. Her credited work includes an exhibition about coastal landscapes, a French parliamentary history catalogue and a mural at Aimé Césaire Métro station.
Her marriage to David Thewlis
Poitou and Thewlis married in 2016. PEOPLE’s profile of the Harry Potter cast’s partners identifies her as a French designer and includes a wedding photograph captioned as having been taken in Aix-en-Provence, France.
The wedding and the publicity surrounding it happened at different times. In a July 2021 interview, Thewlis clarified that they had married five years earlier. PEOPLE also reports that he shared wedding photographs to mark their fifth anniversary.
What does Hermine Poitou do?
Poitou’s professional credits place her in graphic design, with projects involving environmental education, political history and literature. Several institutional records name her alongside fellow designer Catherine Félix. The recurring joint credits make their collaboration a useful thread through these examples of her work.
A coastal exhibition using satellite images
The French space agency CNES credits Poitou and Félix with graphic creation for Mon littoral par satellite, meaning “My Coastline by Satellite”. Its information dossier describes an exhibition featuring satellite views of ten coastal sites in mainland France.
The project brought together CNES, the Conservatoire du littoral, France’s coastal conservation body, and Astrium Services. Displays were scheduled to begin at the Aquarium de Paris on 5 June 2013 and appear at coastal visitor sites during the summer.
The landscapes included the Bay of Somme, Mont-Saint-Michel Bay, the Camargue and Corsica’s Agriate coast. The exhibition connected these images with environmental questions such as biodiversity protection, coastal erosion and land use. Poitou and Félix’s credit concerns the graphic presentation; the dossier separately identifies the image provider, writer and fabricator.
A catalogue about France’s first women deputies
Poitou and Félix also share a graphic-design credit in the National Assembly’s catalogue, Les 33 premières femmes élues députées, or “The First 33 Women Elected as Deputies”.
The Assembly’s exhibition page records an inauguration on 21 October 2015, marking 70 years since those women were elected in 1945. The accompanying catalogue presents portraits, constituencies, political affiliations and individual biographies.
This project provides another example of Poitou’s work with material intended for public understanding. Here, the subject was the entry of women into France’s national parliamentary representation, rather than the environmental themes of the coastal exhibition.
The Aimé Césaire station mural
A later collaboration appears at Aimé Césaire station on Paris Métro Line 12, which opened to passengers on 31 May 2022. RATP credits Poitou and Félix as the mural’s graphic designers, working with Élise Thiébaut on the writing and Annie-Claire Auliard on the iconography.
The mural occupies much of the station’s two-part exterior façade, whose total length is approximately 109 metres. It combines illustrations, patterns and quotations from Césaire’s poems and interviews. Its imagery draws on Martinique, Africa and the natural world, including plants, animals and minerals.
RATP’s Line 12 extension press dossier explains that the mural was commissioned with the city of Aubervilliers and applied to glass. It credits Félix and Poitou with designing and producing the cultural installation. Their work gives the station a visual connection to the writer it honours, placing literature within a space used for everyday travel.
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