When I told my friend, a Hollywood photographer who is used to making women look über-sexy, that I was about to interview Juliette Binoche, he laughed. “She’s a monster. My worst shoot ever.” Considering he’s shot everyone who ever filled the Kodak Theatre for an Oscar night, this is some accolade. Apparently, she was very demanding.

When I relayed my fears to my hairdresser, he nearly dropped his Mason Pearson. “I did her hair. Once. It was the most intense haircut I’ve done.” She told him the music was very loud and he said, “Would you like it turned down,” and she said: “Mmm.” Meaning she wanted it turned off.

Later on I get to know that “mmm” sound very well. The yes that means no and the no that means yes. Before that, I watch her latest movie, Dan in Real Life. A conflicted romantic comedy opposite the comedian Steve Carell. He’s fallen in love with her, but unbeknown to him she’s going out with his more handsome, more vacuous brother.

All the men I know want to come with me to Paris. They don’t care if she’s a monster. They don’t believe it. They think she’s wonderful because of her big brown doe eyes, her luminous skin, and her mouth that is full and voluptuous and expressive. To most men, she is perfect.

A woman who they believe has had a traumatic past (which translates as “vulnerable, therefore tries to please in bed”, but is strong and has got over it (which translates as “not needy”). And she’s French, therefore enigmatic, so they don’t even have to try to understand her.

I read everything that’s been written about her. In more than 20 years of interviews the reactions are identical: an inability to give anything away about her personal life. After a few years they stop asking who is the father of her son, Raphael, 14, or her daughter, Hana, 8. (The first is alleged to be the professional scuba diver André Halle, and the second the actor Benoît Magimel.) It’s true that she’s not good with direct questions. Sometimes the male interviewers are in awe, and that’s why they don’t ask, maybe because they’d like to father a third child, or at least have a go. Women never warm to her, which is why I try to.

She has chosen an old-fashioned, dark oak, crimson-velvet Paris hotel for our meeting. When she arrives it’s hard to take in that this woman – unwashed hair, no make-up, horrible grey clothes – is the sexy siren from any of her signature sensuous roles. She was first naked, in André Techiné’s Rendez-vous, in 1985. Then there was her first English-language movie, Philip Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, opposite Daniel Day-Lewis. Then Louis Malle’s Damage, in which she says: “I’m damaged, and damaged people are dangerous.” In 1997 she won an Oscar for her role in The English Patient. Anthony Minghella had her back for Breaking and Entering; she was naked in that, too.

If there’s a theme throughout her work, it is being emotionally naked and a woman trying to recover from something terrible. But her presence in real life is not as heavy as it is on screen. Maybe she prefers to wring out all the emotion there. There is a detachment, but it’s not intense or frightening, more shy. Her eyes look tired and the grey polo neck is an unflattering shade. I wonder if this means she has no vanity or she thinks she’s so gorgeous it doesn’t matter. Later, she says if people tell her she’s beautiful she never believes them. But I don’t think she’s concerned about beauty or designer labels or anything superficial.

She wants to show me her paintings. If she hadn’t been attracted to the feeling of family she got from working with actors, she might have been a painter. She has painted a series of directors that she’s worked with. Last year she worked on five films back to back, and there’s a sense that she needed to do something else. “But I did these in two weekends, very quickly. I used sensorial memory.”

In the paintings all the directors appear haunting, troubled. They all have very intense, beady eyes. Maybe they are all self-portraits in the way that many artists paint not what they see but how they see themselves. The pictures all show struggle, confusion. They are portraits of what’s inside. And what is quite incredible is she just painted them out of her head without the help of a photograph.

“I have a good memory,” she says, looking at me. There’s a silence between us while she observes what’s inside of me, the room, the dainty plate of macaroons. She’s comfortable in silence. Maybe that’s why people are afraid of her.

She has very specific memories from her childhood.

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