I kinda thought that was really shocking. When they strip away your basic human rights, there’s a routine of going anywhere one door closes, another one opens. If they have a suspicion that you have anything on you, they strip-search you.

You can’t do what you want to do anymore. And that to me was a lot more shocking. They don’t make a difference like he raped 58 women and killed 10 or if you didn’t pay your parking tickets and you’re in prison for six months, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same.

It seems you’re determined to keep acting in Europe. Is that the case?

I don’t want to be just another pretty face in Hollywood. I love the profession very much. I’m European, so I really want to make European films as well. I just want to mix it up. I don’t want to be typecast. I don’t think it has happened yet. But there’s a danger always, definitely in America, so I want to make sure that it’s not going to happen.

There’s a US remake of Anything For Her in the works, with Paul Haggis directing. Are you involved?

I don’t think so. I’d like to be. It would be weird if I played my own part. I know Penelope Cruz did it [on Open Your Eyes and Vanilla Sky] but I don’t know.

You started as a model. Did you always have ambitions to become a cover girl?

To be honest, I never had. But also mainly because I wasn’t that well known as a model. I don’t really look like one I’m not six-foot tall! I went to drama school, classical theatre school, in France. I started out like any other actress short films and really bad TV stuff.

So I didn’t jump any steps. Also, I come from ballet. I was used to being on stage. If anything, I think the modelling helped me be prepared I’m not afraid of the camera. A lot of actresses have issues with light and how they look, and I don’t.

Why did you quit modelling?

I definitely chose to leave modelling. I left when I was 22. I was very tired of travelling all the time.  You’re constantly on the move, and you don’t really have time to make great friends. I still to this day feel like I have no specific roots. I don’t feel at home anywhere in the world. And especially when you’re young, it’s quite a harrowing feeling. I don’t know how to explain it – this sense of loneliness.

You’re coming up in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Was that a long-held ambition to work with him?

It was the dream I never thought would ever become reality. I think most actors would give their right arm to work with him. It was fantastic. It was more than I hoped for. This legend in Hollywood is that he doesn’t cast an actor unless he’s one hundred per cent convinced you’re right for the part.

Many times Hollywood movies are packaged they get two movie stars together. It’s not necessarily always the best for the part. And he truly doesn’t care. He doesn’t care if you’re Brad Pitt or whatever movie star.

If he doesn’t feel like you’ve worked and you’re invested, he won’t cast you. So every single actor in this movie was handpicked. So just to get cast means something.

Talking of Pitt, you worked with him before on Troy. Was it nice to reunite?

We didn’t have any scenes in Troy. We met but we didn’t get to work. It was actually nice to see him in a working light. Because he’s such a persona, such a movie star, and you hear so much about him, it was nice to see the simplicity of him as an actor, just being on set.
          
Do you hope the Tarantino film will push you up the Hollywood ladder further?

Of course you hope so. You always hope that every part you do, a director will see a different side to you, definitely. But that’s not the reason you make a movie. It’s not about that. It’s a personal accomplishment, I guess.
      
How was your experience on Troy?

They put me through such a ringer to get that part and hired me three weeks before we started shooting, and I had to audition so many times, I felt like I knew the scenes by heart. The set was crazy and also there was a feeling that was overwhelming not the set but the whole process.

All these movie stars and the press it generated. It was like being thrown into an arena and also feeling afterwards, once it was over, that I don’t have a back-up or experience as an actor at all. It was my third movie.

All of a sudden there was so much light on my career and some people liked it, some people didn’t. And there was so much expectation on you. I felt like I was put straight into a category. I come from this working class family.

All of a sudden, all of the parts I got were icons or really beautiful women, that men fall in love with or give up their wives for! Which is great I’m not complaining. But that’s not all I aspired to do. It’s a little frustrating and finally I feel doors are opening.

You’re also in Inhale, with Dermot Mulroney. What’s that about?

It’s about organ tourism. How people go to Mexico for a heart or lungs I have a young daughter who needs new lungs. She’s been on this list for six years and she will die and this is our last resource to save her life, to buy some lungs in Mexico. It’s a hard and difficult movie.
   
What other directors would you like to work with?

I would love to work with Darren Aronofsky. He was one of my favourite actors. Before I was an actress, I think I saw Pi twice. I thought it was brilliant. Soderbergh I love. And Jacques Audiard in France he’s my favourite filmmaker there.

Do you get much hassle from the paparazzi?

No! I don’t really have a problem, unless you’re in New York. But I like to travel, go to different places. I cannot bear to be in this bubble that you sometimes live in when you’re in Los Angeles or on a movie. It’s not real life. I wasn’t brought up like that. I come from a very humble and normal background.

How do you envisage your career panning out?

I think I will try very hard to do this for a while, but I can definitely imagine giving it all up in fifteen years and having a family and doing something else. I don’t think I could sit around, especially at that age in America where all of a sudden you can’t get jobs.

Would you be prepared to give up acting for a family life?

No. I don’t know how you feel about it, but I do believe there’s time for everything in life. There’s time to be crazy, and run around and do stupid things, and time to work if I had children, I’d want to be around. I know some people seem to do it all like Cate Blanchett and Kate Winslet. I just don’t see how I could do it. They’re in a great movies at least a movie a year.

Anything For Her is released 5th June


by for www.femalefirst.co.uk
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