'Rendre', the French way to 'make someone happy, sad or crazy'
In English, make does a lot of work: it makes a cake, and it also makes you happy. French splits these jobs. When something causes a person or a thing to become a certain way, French uses rendre followed by an adjective: rendre heureux, rendre triste, rendre fou.
English speakers naturally reach for faire, the usual translation of make, and produce sentences like ça me fait triste. A French speaker will understand, but it sounds wrong. The fix is simple: when make is followed by an adjective describing the result, think rendre.
The pattern is: something + rendre + person or thing + adjective. When the person is a pronoun, it goes before the verb, as usual in French: me rend, te rend, le rend, nous rendent.
The adjective describes the person or thing affected, so it agrees with it. A woman says ça me rend heureuse, a man says ça me rend heureux, and a group says ça nous rend heureux.
Rule of thumb: if you could replace make with cause to be and an adjective follows, use rendre.
The most common combinations describe emotions: heureux, triste and its stronger cousin malheureux, fier, nerveux (also anxieux) and jaloux.
Fou is used a lot, often as friendly exaggeration. Malade works for real illness and for annoyance.
Rendre is not only about people. With possible and impossible, the thing affected is often a plan or an activity.
Rendre responsable means to hold someone responsible, in other words to blame them. It takes de before the thing they are blamed for.
Rendre goes with adjectives. With a noun or an infinitive, French uses faire: faire peur (to scare), faire plaisir (to please), faire rire (to make laugh), faire pleurer (to make cry). So a film te rend triste but te fait pleurer.
Without an adjective, rendre usually means to return something. Context makes the difference clear.
The construction describes a change caused from outside, so it works best with feelings and states like the ones above. For something like it made me hurt, French prefers other verbs. When in doubt, stick to the common combinations.
When English says make + someone or something + adjective, French says rendre + person or thing + adjective: ça me rend heureux, le bruit le rend fou, ça rend le voyage impossible. Make the adjective agree with the person or thing affected, and keep faire for nouns and infinitives such as faire peur and faire rire.