Sensuality, strength and style are perfectly combined in Oscar-tipped French actress EMMANUELLE SEIGNER. She speaks her mind, stands firmly by her man, and loses nothing in the translation, as CRAIG McLEAN discovers.
Emmanuelle Seigner saunters into a deluxe and busy Parisian hotel and is instantly the coolest woman in the room. And not just because the French model-turned-actress has arrived toute seule, without entourage, or even because she is ten minutes early.
"It's too complicated," she decides of the dining area, as she assesses the room. "It's too busy." And here's the thing. Seigner doesn't like fuss. Not around her. And not, indeed, anywhere on her person. She is barely made-up, and is underdressed-to-kill in Nike high-tops, Hudson jeans and a raggedy, cut-off hoodie. "This is old stuff," she shrugs in fluent, but heavily accented English, tugging at her top. "But I like it. It's comfy. During the day, I never dress up."
This 47-year-old mother of two is, in plain English, stunning, and a genuine, ageless star: witty, forcefully candid and self-deprecating, but also coolly aware of her own talents. As if being a French movie star isn't enough, more impressive still, Seigner is also a successful singer. She has released two albums and is working on a more rock-leaning third. Preparing for some concerts, she admits we've met here because it is en route to her singing class.
Ask her to describe her personal style, and this always-in-demand-but-often-not-bothered occasional model, who has starred in campaigns for Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs (and Gap, Uniqlo, Moschino, Céline…) is at a loss. "I don't know," she frowns. "It's hard. I guess I'm more boyish. I dress for comfort. I'm not feminine in that way. I'm not like a doll or something."
There might be busy interior decor in the room, but there's also an elephant. Seigner's husband is Roman Polanski, the acclaimed film director behind the groundbreaking Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and much fêted Oscar-winning The Pianist (2002). He is also a controversial figure, due to his 1977 US conviction for unlawful sex with a minor. He subsequently fled America and has been based in Paris ever since. It was here he made Frantic – the 1988 Harrison Ford thriller in which he cast then 21-year-old Seigner.
It was her breakthrough part. Yet Seigner, who had a cultured upbringing – her grandfather was a famous theater actor, her father a photographer and her mother a journalist – admits she wasn't the most professional of actresses on set. "I was making his life hell," Seigner remembers, guiltily. "I was interested in everything but work, and I was having much more fun being stupid. I remember the last day of shooting, Roman came to me and said, 'I'm so disappointed. I gave you such a beautiful role.' But," she says, smiling, "I was still okay in the film, no? I was not that bad.
But I think I improved." Polanski clearly got over his disappointment: they married two years later, in 1989, and have two children, 15-year-old son Elvis and daughter Morgane, 20, a drama student in London.
It had been suggested that Seigner would be uncomfortable discussing her husband. He is still deemed a fugitive from American justice, four years ago he was detained in Switzerland and threatened with extradition (he was released after ten months in prison and under house arrest). But far from it – his wife brings him up happily and without reservation.
You might say this was unavoidable. After all, she is here to talk about her new movie, Venus In Fur, which was directed by Polanski. But no – Seigner talks at length, and in warm, personal detail, about the man with whom she is still clearly besotted. Of his working methods, she coos, “Roman is always having happy sets. He’s not a director who needs to torture everybody.” Of his look, at the age of 80, she sighs, “He’s a very good-looking man for his age. Really good-looking.”
The French-language Venus In Fur is the couple’s fourth film together and is based on a play by David Ives. It stars only two actors – Seigner and Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell And The Butterfly) – and is set entirely in a theater. He plays a puffed-up director, she an actress who is desperate to land the part. It’s a brilliant, fast-talking comedic psychodrama, a two-hander in which the power quickly but subtly shifts from man to woman.
“It makes fun of this idea of the director as the great auteur who can do anything with his actresses,” says Seigner, as she orders a fruit-laden detox drink. “And it’s also a movie about vanity. The way she’s controlling him with his vanity – saying he’s the best.”
It seems to be a very personal project, not least because Amalric seems to resemble Polanski, from the shaggy hair onwards. Is it a playful study of her relationship with her husband, the great filmmaker 33 years her senior? Or, perhaps, of observers’ perceptions of their relationship?
“Yeah, I think it’s more people’s perceptions. I think Roman saw me during all those years kind of frustrated as an actress. Because it’s very hard to depend on the desire of other people, and it’s very passive. I don’t like being passive. That's why I started to do music also – I need to be the boss a little bit," she says, smiling. "So when he read the play, he thought it was great for me."
Seigner is hugely protective of her husband. This was evidenced four years ago, just after Polanski was arrested, when video footage of her hitting a female paparazzo with a motorcycle helmet went viral. She says that she was "so ashamed" when the clip "was everywhere" online. "I guess if it happened to me now, I wouldn't do that, of course. But I was so in despair that…" Seigner pauses and sighs, then smiles. "I was like a lion. And thank God I didn't kill her or hurt her. Because I was like a crazy woman," she concedes with a laugh.
Standing up for herself fits into our image of a typically strong French woman, but does Seigner think this view held by the rest of the world is accurate? "It's a bit clichéd, but there's always a truth in a cliché," she says. "Some English women are cool, too," she adds. She cites Kate Winslet, who Polanski directed in Carnage. "And Cate Blanchett – I know she's not English, but I love her. She's amazing in Blue Jasmine."
There may be Oscar talk for Blanchett's turn in Woody Allen's critical hit, but there are similar whispers for Venus In Fur, in which Seigner gives the performance of her career. "We'll see," she says lightly. "Of course, I would like it! But it's not going to be this year, so I don't have to compete with Cate. Thank God! I'd have no chance!" laughs super-smart, endlessly elegant Emmanuelle Seigner. Venus In Fur is out November 13. Emmanuelle Seigner at Storm Models.
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