Fame isn’t fine by Juliette Binoche
USA Today
March 19, 1997
by Stephan Schaefer

She is the worldwide face of Lancome and “The English Patient's” best 
supporting actress Oscar nominee, but Juliette Binoche abhors the "cult 
of personality” of international stardom.

"To be an actress was the only thing I wanted," she says.  "The 
consequence I didn't dream of, being a public person”

Famous enough in France to be known simply as "la Binoche," the 
Paris-born-and-raised actress made a splash in the USA this year in the 
World War II romance “Patient” as the maternal Canadian nurse Hana, 
who cares for Ralph Fiennes' grotesque burn victim.

"I want to be a normal person, be a storyteller and not be a star," she 
says.

"An actor has to forget himself and replace himself through another 
person.  That's why you're here.”

The daughter of a Polish-Flemish actress (older sister Marion Stalens is 
also an actress), Binoche was raised in Catholic boarding schools and 
quit France's state-run drama school at age 18 to pursue a film career.

An unmarried mother who guards her privacy, she has had liaisons 
with filmmaker Leos Carax, scuba diver Andre Halle (with whom she 
has a 3-year-old son, Raphael) and currently actor Olivier Martinez, her 
c0-star in 1995's French costume piece “The Horseman on the Roof.”

Binoche, 33, has already chosen the outfit she’ll wear to the Oscars on 
March 24: It's a dark pink dress by French designer Sophie Sitbon.  
"Her clothes are very feminine, and although not well-known, she’s 
independent. I'm very keen on that."

Her expectations of her first Oscar night are modest. "Some people told 
me it's kitsch and tacky. You've got to have fun (because) it’s all false 
and funny."

Binoche was in Paris on a photo shoot when the nominations were 
announced. “I was quite cool," she says. “I remember I was excited, 
but not frightened." Director/ screenwriter Anthony Minghella wasn't 
as calm. "Anthony had to lie down before he got the news, he couldn't 
stand waiting anymore."

Patient is Binoche's biggest exposure since her international 
breakthrough nearly a decade ago in “The Unbearable Lightness of 
Being.”

Back then, she resisted offers from Hollywood, choosing instead to 
work with her lover Carax on “The Lovers of Pont-Neuf.” (The film's 
failure finished the relationship.)

She hasn't changed. What ever she does next "has to be a necessity," 
Binoche says.

"Having a success doesn't make it more difficult; I try to stay focused 
on the quality more than anything else."

She's trying to convince Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami (“Through 
the Olive Trees”) that she's not too young for his next picture.

"I always had that problem, with Louis Malle for “Damage” and 
Krzysztof Kieslowski (for “Blue), and Kiarostami thinks that now.

"There's a moment it makes me smile, but it's beyond the age... Meryl 
Streep is luminous and marvelous beyond any age, and she'll work 
until she's dead, because you can believe she's a real person and fife is 
going through her.

"That's what we go to see in movies: life and truth. That's what I want 
to see. I don't want to see American murder films, with guns and angry 
faces. It's too violent and gives a kind of pollution everywhere in the 
world.

"An actress should be conscious of that and be responsible for that."

SIDEBAR

‘Patient’ bed an object of desire

Actors often exit with their film wardrobes, but on “The English 
Patient,” it was Ralph Fiennes' sickbed that sparked a possessive 
frenzy.

Admits Juliette Binoche, "I wanted the English bed badly - and I asked 
for it first. Ralph and I had a big chat about it, and he wanted it too. At 
one moment I said, 'You have it' and he said 'Why?' and I laughed and 
smiled because I’m the nice person.’”

But in the end, producer Saul Zaentz kept the bed.  "It's in his Tuscany 
house," Binoche reveals, adding philosophically, “That’s the way it is; 
the producer has the power.”

CAPTION UNDER PHOTOGRAPH

Impatient with stardom: ‘This cult of personality is dangerous for the 
soul,’ says Oscar-nominated actress Juliette Binoche.