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When Audrey Tautou was invited to audition for the 2006 blockbuster The Da
Vinci Code, she asked if she could take a photograph of its director, Ron
Howard, and leading man, Tom Hanks - just so she could prove she had
actually met them.
“I don’t think I was at the top of Ron’s list, and when he was seeing people,
I didn’t think there’d be any point in me travelling all that way when I
wasn’t suitable,” she says. “I really wasn’t sure it would happen.” She
laughs. “I have never been a self-confident person.” Surely her confidence
has grown as she’s got older and enjoyed critical and commercial acclaim?
“No, no, it hasn’t, doctor!” A quick smile and a raised eyebrow temper her
stab at sarcasm.
Ordinarily, the French actress finds interviews an uncomfortable process; when
promoting The Da Vinci Code she regularly bristled like an irritable
hedgehog. Her English, delivered with a musical lilt, has vastly improved in
the meantime, and today she seems warm, open, even sprightly, as she happily
snaps away with her camera. Tautou likes to photograph her interviewers: “I
have no objective with the photos, but you never do anything for nothing,”
she says. “One day, I will understand this puzzle.” Her relaxed demeanour
might stem from the fact that she is on home turf, nattering over a coffee
in her manager’s Paris office, dressed in that smart-casual way French women
master in their cradles - a simple black shift dress, a minimum of make-up -
and far away from the brouhaha that accompanies the promotion of a Hollywood
blockbuster.
Or maybe Tautou just likes her most recent film, Hors de Prix (Priceless, as
it’s titled in the English-speaking world), and is eager to talk about it.
Her first since The Da Vinci Code, it’s a sly, shimmering and decidedly
glitzy romantic romp, cast in a similar mould to the Audrey Hepburn classic
Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Certainly, the writers, Benoît Graffin and Pierre
Salvadori (who also directs), offer more than a passing nod to Holly
Golightly when conjuring Tautou’s character, Irène, a young woman wooed by
affluent older men. Like Truman Capote’s creation, she possesses a fine line
in rata-tat badinage, although, being a thoroughly modern woman, she is a
little more streetwise and, well, naughty.
Irène certainly marks something of a departure for Tautou. “She’s far from the
kind, shy and discreet women I tend to play,” the 31-year-old actress says.
“It was new to portray a woman who plays with her sincerity, who is a
seductress, a manipulator and a liar. I was able to compose a character, as
opposed to being very natural. It was great to realise I could be this kind
of real woman.”
That is not to say that Tautou’s previous on-screen incarnations have not been
real women, just that many of her better-known characters - including the
pair that inhabit the Jean-Pierre Jeunet films Amélie and A Very Long
Engagement - have tended to err on the wing-borne side of flighty. Irène, on
the other hand, is cool and calculating, displaying a desperate desire to
fight off the advances of an emotionally rich but financially poor young
hotel bellboy, Jean, played with great verve by the Moroccan-born comic Gad
Elmaleh. She is, in other words, an extremely self-confident woman.
“She wants to seduce older men to obtain money, comfort and the lifestyle she
likes,” Tautou explains. “Her moti-vation is not nasty; she has a true
fascination with the places she goes in these relationships. To me, that’s
scary, but I think she considers herself living a life like a princess -
even if the charming princes aren’t as young, pretty and exciting as she may
like.”
As the story develops, Irène finds herself falling for Jean - “After all, it
would be a strange romantic comedy if there was no romance” - and, while
Tautou insists that she doesn’t share Irène’s self-assurance, she
appreciates her blend of romance and cynicism. “I have a bit of both in me,
in that I can’t stop having a distance between my life and the world I work
in. I’m a bit cynical. I’m not completely involved with looking at what’s
going on around me and who I really am. I can’t take that kind of thing too
seriously. In another way, though, while I’m maybe not romantic, I am
idealistic. I have a lot of expectations about life and how I should fill
it.”
This self-confessed idealism is no empty boast. Tautou has always projected a
mild disdain for Hollywood and, after forging her career in French cinema,
she resisted the lure of the American blockbuster for some time. She was
born in Beaumont, a small town 100 miles south of Paris, and while neither
of her parents (her father was a dentist, her mother a teacher of adult
literacy), nor her three younger siblings (she has one brother and two
sisters), displayed any great appetite for artistic endeavour, she quickly
developed a love of music and literature. “Actually, I never was very good
at music,” she offers, ignoring the fact that she played the oboe in an
Auvergne youth orchestra.
Not convinced that she could prosper as a musician, Tautou moved to Paris to
study literature, then, in 1995, enrolled on an acting course at the Cours
Florent drama school, which counts Isabelle Adjani, Sophie Marceau and
Edouard Baer among its many alumni.
The story goes that when she settled into her new apartment, she was so
alarmed by the style and beauty of the women tottering by on the stairwell,
she considered returning straight home. As it transpired, she was sharing a
block with the Elite modelling agency; the majority of her peers were not
quite so glamorous. The Florent, meanwhile, encouraged its students to seek
professional work while they studied, and Tautou made her screen debut
(alongside Baer) in the 1996 French television movie Coeur de Cible.
Her career prospered, but Tautou retained her disdain for big-budget
film-making. Even when Amélie, her whimsical 2001 hit, earned her
considerable renown, breaking the $175m mark worldwide at the box office and
scooping five Oscar nominations, she remained true to her pledge, spurning
Hollywood’s advances. Until 2004, when she did the unexpected, signing up
for what was potentially one of the biggest blockbusters of all time, The Da
Vinci Code.
“If you had asked me before I shot that film whether I would do a big
Hollywood movie, I would have said no, of course,” she says. “But sometimes
you can be surprised by meetings you have, and there are omens that convince
you to do something that doesn’t sound natural for you.”
Although the critics battered the film, it took more than $750m in cinemas, so
some people clearly liked it. Did Tautou? “I keep seeing myself with all the
special effects,” she smiles. “So it’s hard for me to watch the movie as a
spectator. Usually it’s difficult for me, and in this movie it’s even
harder. I guess that’s where my cynicism comes in - it’s all too much for
me.
“I liked the experience, though, and I enjoyed shooting the film; I would do
it all again if I had to. Really, though, everything is so different from
what I am as a person. I’m more interested in people than budgets.” So,
would she make another Hollywood film if she liked the team involved? “As I
said, I liked Tom Hanks, Ron Howard and Ian McKellen, but I don’t know if I
would do another big Hollywood movie, because the experience wouldn’t be new
any more. Also, I don’t know if they would want me. Why would they pick me?”
That’s not her lack of self-confidence speaking; it’s a practical
consideration. After all, even the most talented French actresses have
enjoyed limited success in Hollywood. Consider the ever-classy Catherine
Deneuve. Her forays into American film-making amount to a high-class hooker
alongside Burt Reynolds in Hustle and a bisexual vampire in Tony Scott’s The
Hunger. Isabelle Adjani, meanwhile, suffered the ignominy of the Warren
Beatty flop Ishtar, while Isabelle Huppert took a tumble with Michael
Cimino’s bleak antiwestern Heaven’s Gate. More recently, even Emmanuelle
Béart (Mission: Impossible), Juliette Binoche (The English Patient) and
Sophie Marceau (Braveheart) have been limited to relatively minor roles.
“I don’t know why that is,” muses Tautou. “First, I don’t know their
motivation: did they really want to work in Hollywood? But also I think it’s
very difficult for French people to work in Hollywood because it’s such a
huge industry, and to be able to create some space for yourself is a hard
job. Plus, the language doesn’t help. You can work almost only as a foreign
character. Then there’s the French film industry, which is not amazingly
well, but is able to finance big productions. We have wonderful directors -
they might not be as famous as Steven Spielberg, but they bring me so much
pleasure.”
Among Tautou’s most pleasurable relationships is the one forged with Jeunet on
Amélie and A Very Long Engagement; they are now set to team up for a third
time. Tautou recently signed on as the face of Chanel No 5, following in the
tottering footsteps of the Australian superstar Nicole Kidman, whose
eye-popping commercial, shot by Baz Luhrmann, proved the most expensive ever
made. Jeunet will direct Tautou’s campaign, which is due to screen next
year, though it’s unlikely to contain the same level of razzmatazz.
By the time they shoot, Tautou will certainly be familiar with Chanel; she is
also set to star as the famous designer in her next film, Coco Avant Chanel.
“It’s not a huge biopic about her; it’s a film about her early life, her
personality, all her experiences, which lead us to see and understand who
she will become,” she explains. “It’s an interesting way to look at her. It
is not fictional; it is based on her life. The script is finished, but I
have not had time to digest it all. The director, Anne Fontaine, did some
research about Coco – she wanted to see what the most interesting period of
her life was - and she thought she found that in Coco’s youth.” Tautou will
start shooting the film this summer, before joining up with Jeunet to plan
the Chanel commercials.
With that slate ahead of her, and with Priceless having already taken more
than $25m worldwide at the box office, she must be feeling, well, pleased.
Confident even? “I’m happy, of course,” she says. As the interview draws to
a close, she flashes one last smile: “And thanks for seeing me, doctor.”
Priceless opens on Friday
