On anyone but Juliette Binoche, a grey cableknit jumper tied bulkily about the neck, its woollen sleeves dangling like shrunken arms from the throat, would look absurd. But this is the best-known actress in France; a woman who looked Hollywood in the eye, shrugged and said no; a woman who, when she accepted her Best Actress Award for
Copie Conforme at the Cannes festival on Sunday, accessorised her strapless white Celine gown with a large sign bearing the name Jafar Panahi, an Iranian director imprisoned for “making the wrong kind of films” and released on bail yesterday, thanks to her campaign.
“As an actress I think there is always a political consciousness there,” she muses, when I ask about the tears she shed on the red carpet, “and doing a film with Abbas Kiarostami [the Iranian film director who wrote
Copie Conforme] is already political, so I don’t need to add more. Your consciousness should be in the choice of the work.”
Despite Hollywood’s lengthy courtship (the 46-year-old famously refused parts in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park and opposite Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible), and the luminous beauty that prompted the childhood nickname La Brioche (as a schoolgirl, the Paris-born daughter of a theatre director and actress was said to be as delectable as freshly baked bread), Binoche’s choice of work has remained resolutely unfrivolous. She has worked with the most acclaimed directors in the world over the course of her career (Jean-Luc Godard, who wrote Je Vous Salue Marie with her in mind, Krzysztof Kieslowski on Three Colours Blue, and Lasse Hallström on Chocolat), won an Oscar for her role in Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient, but, aside from a five-year contract with Lancôme – has tended to shirk celebrity.
“I have always been cautious of that world,” she says, sitting on a shaded day-bed of her Cannes hotel, an American twang lilting her French accent. “I avoided going to too many parties, and have, from the start, wanted to protect my kids from all that. My private life is very private and I have chosen not to live in America or England, where you are so exposed and can’t fight against it.”
“In Paris, there are privacy laws preventing you from being photographed in the street.” When I ask whether that was the reason that she never returned the attentions of Hollywood, unlike fellow actresses Emmanuelle Béart or Sophie Marceau, she scoffs in a rather graceful, Gallic way.
“Non, non: that wouldn’t have been a strong enough reason. And besides, that would mean that they had won.” It wasn’t the stereotyped “seductive French female roles” that put her off either, she assures me. “We have our role in the movie business and I think that it’s OK for French women to be initiators and goddesses of love, but I always like something challenging.”
She studied drama at the prestigious Conservatoire de Paris: then, as now, the intensity she brings to her work has never wavered. She admits to having found it nearly impossible to return to “real life” once the cameras stopped turning as a result. “I would often come down with a fever after the last day of filming because the separation was so brutal. The fact is that I would have killed myself for a film before. I just didn’t care about my life, because for me that was true dedication, and back then, art was bigger than anybody to me – bigger than myself, even.”
The epiphany came while Binoche was making Les Amants du Pont Neuf in 1991. “I almost drowned during filming, but I saved myself in order to live. I realised then, I think, that love was more important than anything else.”
At the time, Binoche was involved in a five-year relationship with the film’s director, Leos Carax, and has subsequently been linked to actor Olivier Martinez, her co-star on the Horseman on the Roof, Daniel Day-Lewis and, most recently, the Argentine director Santiago Amigorena. She has a 10-year-old daughter, Hanna by the French actor Benoit Magimel and a son, Raphael, 16, by a professional scuba diver named Andre Halle.
Enforced separations – the subject of Copie Conforme, a Tuscan love story exploring the marriage of an antique dealer (Binoche) and a writer (opera singer William Shimell) who behave like strangers after a long absence – are something Binoche can relate to. “When both sides have passion, it can work. Passion, however, requires your whole body, and if you are working hard that can be difficult to give.”
On the subject of her own relationships she will say little, cloaking any personal revelations in the therapy-speak French actresses are prone to. “I love in a different way now. I am less taken by my emotions. It’s not that I’m less sensitive, but I do feel more stable now.”
On a physical level too, Binoche has acquired gravity. That exceptionally sweet face – which once reminded one of a beautiful, shy deer – has aged naturally and shamelessly. Tiny fans of lines sprout from her eyes when she laughs and her default expression (perhaps because the interviewing process is one she clearly suffers rather than enjoys) is sharper than it once was. There are, however, no caveats necessary to describe her beauty (no “for her age,” no “considering”). And there’s something else: unlike so many in the industry, Binoche’s life shows on her face.
“Fighting the ageing process,” she maintains with a low, dismissive laugh, “just doesn’t work. I think that actresses, ultimately, are responsible for the faces we give to women. But I understand the fear, you know? I really do: it’s easy to think 'I’ll never work again if I lose some of my beauty.’”
Was there a moment in her life when she thought that? “The thing is that I never felt beautiful,” she insists, shaking her head. “I really never did. I think I can change my looks and be different things, but I’ve never thought of myself as this face.”
Didn’t the attentions of fans, directors and cosmetic giants convince her of that? “Not really. There have been moments in my life when I have felt it. But I feel the most beautiful when I’m happy, because only then can you let go of the fear and just exist in the moment. When people forget themselves, that’s when they are at their most beautiful.”
Something one might assume that it’s impossible for actresses to do, but Binoche insists not. “You can look ugly in a film but the beauty still comes out of your performance. So as actresses it’s better to count on your performance than your looks.”
Which is why Binoche has avoided all cosmetic help. “It’s difficult to act with Botox because it doesn’t move – so no, I’ve never been tempted to have it.” Instead she prefers to see a London facialist named Su-Man Hsu, recommended to her by Anthony Minghella. “She does these facials that keep your face alive, so that it doesn’t fall down dead, you know?”
Although Binoche intermittently splutters with laughter at the silliness of female vanity, she concedes that the photo-shoots and red carpet dresses are “a fun part of the experience, which I enjoy. And thank God, because otherwise it would be a nightmare. Plus the thing about very talented designers like Albert Elbaz and Phoebe Philo is that it’s not just material – it’s something of one’s soul.”
A photographer, lying soldier-like behind a sand bank, rattles off a series of photographs and Binoche breaks off mid-sentence to call out: “Not now, please!”
The actress has, according to those who have interviewed her over the years, has mellowed from the time she allegedly called journalists “pollution”. What she terms her “belief system,” however, is as strong as ever: she was seduced by Abbas's film, she claims, because she was convinced that it was a true story, and three years ago, while promoting the 9/11 film A Few Days in September, she caused a stir by insisting that the American government knew that the atrocities were going to happen.
Still, the way Binoche sees acting not as a trade but as a vocation is undeniably admirable. “In America my name is always preceded with 'Oscar-wining actress’,” she chuckles.
Did that change her life? “I suppose it made a difference, but for me an Oscar is a consequence, not an aim. My aim is more hidden, more profound. As a child I would dream about uniting people across the world. If you could do that through film, can you imagine how wonderful that would be?”
