Honestly, you’d think the Cannes film festival would be the last word in chic,
but it takes hours for me to catch a glimpse of glamour. Having fought my
way down the Croisette, clogged with a wretched assortment of snap-happy
schoolkids and Russian skanks, I elbow through the lobby of the Carlton
hotel, past the hatchet-jawed American film publicists, up to the Sharon
Stone suite (classy), and wait. Twenty minutes later, Diane Kruger strolls
in looking as cool as a cornichon: Arctic locks in a tight chignon, skin a
pale biscuit against her black Chanel microshorts and vertiginous heels that
bump her up to 5ft 10in. Her face is so symmetrical, your eyes practically
slide off it. It’s as if she has been drawn with a set square.
Of course, this face was the making of her, though I’d imagine it has
downsides. Kruger’s appeal, for men and women, is somewhat chilly. It’s
impossible to imagine her as the girl next door or a sultry temptress, so
she often ends up playing the sexless totty, rather than the heroine.
“Classic, very Aryan” is how she describes herself. It’s no surprise, then,
that the director who cast her in her breakthrough role — Helen in 2004’s
Troy — was German. Or that Karl Lagerfeld, her great friend, is besotted
with her look. Luckily, Quentin Tarantino has finally put her Hanoverian
charms to better use as Bridget von Hammersmark, an arch 1940s German film
star-turned-spy, in his latest gore-fest, Inglourious Basterds. There’s a
marvellous 20ft poster of her wearing a roguish hat hanging outside the
hotel window, with the strapline: “Diane Kruger is a Basterd!”
Thankfully, she’s not a basterd. Or a bastard, even. Though she can come off a
little — how shall I put this? — breezy. Since she arrived in Hollywood, a
few years back, her career has seen her play opposite the big boys (Brad
Pitt, Josh Hartnett, Nicolas Cage), so Kruger says she is constantly
reminded of where she sits on the fame scale. This gives the 33-year-old a
commendably relaxed and unstarry attitude, though the downside is that she
can come off a tad workaday. The second she enters the room, she drops her
tiny posterior into a gilt chair, pulls her knees to her chin, avoids
sustained eye contact and begins to talk very, very fast. Perhaps she
prefers a certain German efficiency about proceedings?
“Of course, the part on paper seemed to be perfect for me,” she says, rattling
straight into the story of how Tarantino cast her. “But it was kind of hard,
because he didn’t believe that I was German — because I spent so many
years trying to perfect the American accent. Anyway, I flew myself from New York
to Berlin and, you know, worked my butt off. There’s no sweet-talking
Quentin. He’s famous for that. He doesn’t care who you are, what you’ve done
before. He doesn’t care if you’re Brad Pitt. If he doesn’t think you’re
right for the part, he’s not going to hire you.” I suspect, as she got such
iffy reviews for Troy (to be fair, everyone did), that she’s extra
thrilled by Tarantino’s endorsement. “We clicked,” she nods happily.
He obviously got the best of her. It’s her most confident, witty screen turn
to date. Although the film is far from perfect, it’s worth the entry price
alone for the scene where Pitt penetrates her on a vet’s table. I won’t say
where. Or with what.
“The fake blood was terrible,” she squeals. “Really, really sticky. Then the
frigging stuff dries under the light and it’s like having a wax on set. But
I loved working with Quentin. He’s a demanding boss. When he’s not happy,
you know, he’s very vocal. But it was nice to be treated like one of the
boys. That’s more my true self, I think. Maybe it’s because I don’t do a lot
of TV, but I know people see me as this really glamorous...” she tails off.
“It’s a little weird for me, because that’s not where I come from. I’m a
country girl. Definitely not sophisticated.”
What utter hogwash! Kruger spent most of her childhood summers on a
scholarship to the Royal Ballet School in London, then five years as a
top-drawer international model, based in Paris, before becoming a film
actress. Yes, her father worked in computers and her mother in a bank, and
there wasn’t much money around in her youth, but unsophisticated? She looks
as if she could teach Joan Collins a thing or two about self-maintenance.
She’s also a regular on the fashion circuit, often accompanied by her
longtime squeeze, Joshua Jackson, better known to a generation of women as
Pacey Witter off Dawson’s Creek. What’s it like living with Pacey, then?
“You know what, I’ve never seen Dawson’s Creek, because my mum didn’t really
let us watch TV,” she laughs. “He couldn’t believe it. He was, like, ‘You’re
the perfect girl for me, because you never saw me with pimples.'" Hasn’t he
got a box set he could show you? “Well, yes, but I’m not sure if I
should watch it. It might change my perception of him. When I met him, he’s
a man, you know? I’m not sure I want to see his awkward teenage mode.”
The couple recently moved to Vancouver, where Jackson is filming his new
television show. Kruger commutes up and down the West Coast to Los Angeles.
It suits her fine, as she’s not sure she’s ready for the kind of superfame
her leading men tend to have. She saw Pitt swarmed on the set of Troy and,
though Basterds was more low-key, she doesn’t envy his lot. “You know, he’s
Brad Pitt, he’s such an icon that I don’t really get his life. I
can’t relate to that at all. The only time that I could have those intense
conversations is when he’s on set, because then he’s just another actor,
he’s one of us. I’m not saying he’s aloof, but he can’t go anywhere
without his security detail and I personally find it... I don’t know how he
does it. Being a nice guy, trying to do well, always friendly to everybody.”
Kruger’s struggle up the fame ladder began by accident when her mother
enrolled her, aged two, in ballet classes after school. “Cheaper than a
nanny, right?” she smiles. Her home life in a tiny village outside Hanover
was already fraught. “I was a pain in the ass, as my family situation was a
little difficult. All my life growing up, my dad was battling alcoholism.
Home was always mad. I don’t remember him ever not being drunk.”
After her parents split, Kruger lost herself in ballet, and would have gone
pro had it not been for an injury in her teens. Instead, she found herself
back at her strict Catholic school, an ugly duckling, wondering what to do
with her life. She took to screaming “This is a lie! It’s all a lie!” in
church, and struggled socially. “I was not cool at school, I came home
crying a lot, but it kind of changed the summer when I was 14. I gained a
little bit of weight because I quit dancing and cut my hair, so I didn’t
look like a ballet rat any more. All of a sudden, boys were starting to pay
attention.” She gives a wicked grin. “They had been so horrible to me that I
dated an older boy out of spite.”
At 16, she won an Elite modelling competition and her mother, amazingly,
allowed her to move to Paris on her own. At “only” 5ft 7in, she modelled for
Dior and Yves Saint Laurent, booked campaigns for Armani and made the cover
of Elle. But at 21 she quit at the top of her game — and to her booker’s
despair — enrolling at France’s most prestigious drama school, then
left early because she was already landing jobs. She had a starter marriage
with the handsome actor/director Guillaume Canet (Leonardo DiCaprio’s love
rival in The Beach), then, a year after they split, shacked up with Jackson.
A seamless ascent, and testament to those symmetrical features, but as she
heads into her mid-thirties, Kruger seems less bothered by it all now.
“It was much harder when I was with Guillaume,” she says, “because it felt
like I wasn’t around. But now, because when Josh and I met, I was already
doing movies in France and America, the tone was set from the beginning.
We’ve found a good balance. We try not to be apart for more than two weeks
at a time. Now I’m ready to take a break — and, so far, it’s really worked.”
I wouldn’t expect anything less.
Inglourious Basterds is in cinemas nationwide from August 21
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