The Mail on Sunday
May 27, 2001

Only a brave man would keep Sophie Marceau waiting. After all, she's one of the most famous people in France, both as an actress - she dazzled audiences as Princess Isabelle in Mel Gibson's kilt-fest Braveheart and as mysterious heiress Elektra King in the Bond movie The World is Not Enough - and as an icon of beauty. She has been the "face" of Guerlain, she was voted the woman most Frenchmen want to sleep with, and one Leonardo DiCaprio declared that he wanted to work with her, trumpeting, "She is as hot as it gets."

Unfortunately, thanks to the vicissitudes of Eurostar and the lunchtime Paris gridlock, I'm an hour late for my appointment with this goddess, and my rising panic isn't assuaged by the constant sight of her vivacious, teardrop-shaped face emblazoned across magazine covers on the newsstands we're stuck in front of, nor by the fact that her beauty is only surpassed by her legendary outspokenness. Told of DiCaprio's ardour, she dismissed him as "a child", harrumphing, "What is he, 13 or 11 ? Perhaps I could play his nanny." Sean Bean, her co-star in Anna Karenina, was "nice, but quite ordinary"; Robert De Niro, whom she encountered on a plane, was "a funny-looking little man I didn't even recognise"; on meeting Bruce Willis, her first thought was "So what ?"; John Malkovich, her co-star in Beyond the Clouds, was "a little boring - he thinks he's really intellectual". Even Mel Gibson, who cast her in Braveheart because "she looked exactly like my idea of a princess", gets short shrift: "Every scene in that movie was all about Mel, Mel, Mel."

All of which means that by the time I drag myself into Sophie's management office, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, apprehension is riding high; a state of affairs not helped by an imperious press officer, who solemnly intones: "Sophie is waiting." So it's all the more surprising when the goddess herself appears, the personification of chic in a pink, buttoned jersey top emphasising her not inconsiderable décolletage, teamed with black linen trousers and a huge grey floor-skimming padded jacket which she immediately discards, all smiles and solicitations. "Oh, the trains and traffic," she exclaims in her impeccable English, "they are so..."and she dismisses the Euro-transport networks with an extravagant Gallic shrug, accompanied by an exclamation I can only transcribe as "Pouf !"

This is the first pleasant surprise about Sophie. The second is that she's even more glorious in the flesh than any picture - moving or still - can suggest. Her looks have inspired journalists to prosaic peaks ("She has the regular perfection that makes babies smile," hyperventilated one. "The thick, glossed hair tempts the fingers"), so I'll content myself by saying that, in her 35th year, she could pass for a decade and a half younger; that selfsame hair frames a burnished, unlined, mobile face, while her fringe falls into her remarkable eyes, amber-coloured and playful, and when she smiles they narrow to a pair of mischievous slits without losing their intense regard.

For make no mistake, Sophie is as serious as she is girlish. Like her peers - Deneuve, Bouquet, Béart - she's as much a cultural ambassador as an actress, albeit one whose diplomatic skills may need a little finessing. On a tour of the Far East with the late President Mitterrand as an official "Jewel of France", she was asked what she thought of his beloved glass pyramid in the Louvre courtyard. "I said I thought this was crazy, a... what do you call it ? A blot," she says, grinning at the memory. A flattened Mitterrand storied off in a huff.

Now Sophie has taken this cultural dominatrix thing a step further. She's here not to promote her latest movie (though she does have one - a costume romp called, coincidentally, Belphégor - Phantom of the Louvre, unlikely to trouble a multiplex near you soon) but to talk about her debut novel. It's called Telling Lies, and it's about a young actress who moons about in her Paris apartment, reflecting on the man who's just left her bed (or who may be just about to arrive - the densities of the Marceau prose sometimes obscure the finer plot details), makes trips to Cannes and Los Angeles (where she feels bored and isolated, respectively), and ruminates on life ("I no longer believed that I had to go on inventing rules for myself in true life, in my life, which anyway was no longer my own but had somehow become other people's lives"), while dazzling everyone she meets with her profound beauty. It seems natural to ask how autobiographical it is.

"Well," she says airily, lighting one of those impossibly elegant French micro-cigarettes, "anything somebody does is autobiographical in some way. But this takes elements from my life and adds other viewpoints, though the matter of the book is very close to what I know, what I've been through, and the people I've met."

It has been suggested that the idea for the novel came from Sophie's long-term partner, Polish director Andrzej Zulawski, some 26 years her senior, and father of her five-year-old son Vincent (they met when she was 18 and although they're not married - "we haven't had time" - she calls him "my husband" and sports two rings on her wedding finger). Zulawski, a published novelist himself, wrote a scathing review of the book when it was first published in France five years ago, and Sophie has seemed reluctant to talk about it since. Now, however, she claims she's "very proud" of her efforts. "It was always my idea to do it," she says, "but I was just jotting down my thoughts like a diary. I never thought it would be a book. But after a while I saw I could put things together, and now I think its a good portrait of someone who, psychologically and emotionally speaking, looks beyond exteriors into metaphysical questions. It's very abstract. I would love to ask you," she says suddenly, levelling her gaze at me, "how does it read ?"

It's very... French, I offer.

"Yeah," she says, laughing delightedly. "Very French. I think this is correct l"

The precedents for actors-turned-novelists are ominous - one only has to scour the bargain bins for remaindered works by the likes of Rupert Everett and Ethan Hawke. Was Sophie not daunted by this ? She wrinkles her nose. "These people, I don't read their books," she sniffs. "I have no time for this when there is so much great literature to read. I don't compare myself to them." And she blows out a mouthful of smoke with exquisite disdain.

Disappointingly, this is as close as Sophie comes to her off-message frankness. When asked about the Oscars, she even goes out of her way to praise Julia Roberts, who, she says, "has made a good career". Of her much-vaunted rivalry with Isabelle Adjani - who used to date Zulawski, and whom Sophie once compared herself to with the words "I'm eight years younger, three inches taller, and I've got breasts" - she says only that "in this job, people think they have to have ambition, and maybe they get jealous if they feel that they missed out on something. But I think there should be room for everybody."

She seems a little restrained today, though it's clear that the ambivalence toward Hollywood in the novel is mirrored in real life. "I have experienced isolation there," she confirms. "I have different artistic goals. For me it's not about money all the time; it's not my culture or my country. I think there's only room for one French actress at a time for them, and right now it's Juliette Binoche. She's loved because maybe she represents more the idea of France as Americans imagine it."

Does she think her tell-it-like-it-is tendency has put Hollywood off her ? "Do you think I'm outspoken ?" she smiles sweetly. "You're supposed to put your head down, be nice, smile, don't be controversial, and I can't do that." She makes a what-the-hell face. "My next film will be in Hollywood if I like the script, but if not I won't cry. I go my own way."

It was certainly a shock to see the cerebral Sophie turning up as a fully fledged Bond girl. Rumour had ìt that Zulawski was equally taken aback, considering the role beneath her - not to mention being intensely jealous of her love scenes with Pierce Brosnan - and that the couple separated in the ensuing row. Not true, says Sophie. "The Bond was a fun thing and it opened up a lot of opportunities. Plus, I got to play a villain, and it was much more liberating to do that in a Bond movie than in a real movie."

However, she concedes that Zulawski was jealous. "He can't watch my love scenes," she chortles. "He goes to the kitchen and rattles the pots and pans. That's healthy though, no ?" Well, yes. But it seems that, surprisingly perhaps, Sophie is also troubled by screen nudity. "It makes me choosy about roles," she says. "Forty years ago actresses didn't have to do that, and still they were good actresses. We've lost a lot of eroticism. And," she says, getting quite worked up, "I hate those kisses, you know, American kisses, with the tongues out. They're disgusting. I can't look, its like porno l"

You must have had to kiss like that in movies, I insist. "No !" she fairly shrieks. "I don't kiss this way ! Other actors, maybe, mentioning no names."

Oh, go on...

"Well, Malkovich then," she spits. "Ugh."

Sophie's singular views are grounded, you feel, by a complete confidence in her own beauty. Unlike most beautiful women, who invariably protest that they think they look like ducks, Sophie always knew she was a stunner. "Boys made me aware of it," she beams. "They used to follow me around and stare at me." Does she think a person can get a long way on beauty alone ? "Oh yeah," she shoots back. "Beauty is like for ever; it changes, but I have a satisfaction to see myself changing, maturing. I love to feel that I'm beautiful, when people say, 'Oh, you look great tonight.'"

Her looks have certainly helped Sophie go the distance. She was born Sophie Maupu in a Parisian suburb to a truck-driver father and shop-assistant mother. She changed her name in homage to Paris's Avenue Marceau, and landed her first acting role at 13, answering an ad for child models because "l was bored and wanted to be independent and earn some money". Was she ambitious ? "I was never looking for the big fame," she says, almost wistfully. When I was young I used to see statues of people and think, "Oh, it must be terrible to be a statue because everyone can look at you and the rain falls on you and pigeons crap on you."

However, the "big fame" found her when she starred in the 1980 film La Boum - a Dirty Dancing-style teen sensation movie - and its sequel; suddenly she was "France's little sweetheart". "I remember being confused and having to go through ten years in about a year," she says. "I had to leave school because I was too busy and too different. It taught me a lot in a short time, but I felt misunderstood, because I was known for this fluffy stuff, but I've never been a frivolous person. I've always been quite shy."

Meeting Zulawski was certainly a huge turning point for Sophie; he immediately cast her as a teenage prostitute in L'Amour braque (Crazy Love), its scenes of violence and nudity (not a pan-rattling offence, it appears, in Zulawski's own movies), turning Sophie's image on its head, and leading to accusations that he was her Svengali. "It wasn't that," she snorts. "He saw the direction I needed to go in. People thought I was a little girl and there was a lot more I needed to express." She's proud to refer to Zulawski as "my only lover - I never had a real boyfriend before Andrzej". What of those polled Frenchmen who are all yearning to take his place ? "I think that means most men are more romantic than we think," she says ingenuously. "They believe in something that's not spoiled, they're not going for easiness or accessibility." Prospective suitors should be warned, however - Sophie likes a good spat. "Andrzej and I row every few days and I love it," she declares. "It's a good thing, no ?

The couple have a house in Warsaw and another just outside Paris, where their son attends school. Has motherhood changed Sophie ? "It's improved me, I think," she considers. Sometimes, she says, she'll be out with Vincent and he'll point to her and shout, "Look ! It's Sophie Marceau and she's my mother !" He says, "People like you, so why shouldn't I tell them ?"

I'm surprised, I remark, that you haven't been immortalised as Marianne, the bust that epitomises the spirit of France, like your forebears Inès de la Fressange and Catherine Deneuve. "You know what ?" she exclaims. "I'm very surprised myself, but that's the contradiction in French people; they don't want to admit that they want me to do this."

Most people will by now have noticed the contradictions in Sophie herself - the girl who didn't want to be a statue but wouldn't mind being a bust; the shy person who regularly disrobes but hates kissing; the flinty goddess who doesn't mind being kept waiting for an hour; the actress who's actually a novelist (she's currently taking a break from movies to concentrate on her writing). "Ah," she says, "but this is the thing about where I come from; we contradict ourselves and argue from opposing viewpoints all the time. That's why I called the book Telling Lies. It's just like you said it was..."

Very French ?

"Yes," laughs Sophie Marceau, tickled all over again. "Very, very French."