This page contains various past bits of news, including extracts from English newspapers and magazines.  Comments in red are comments I have added recently and where not in the original news clip.  Where possible the source of any articles not writen by me is given along with the author.

Archive of News Articles

1998:

Emmanuelle Béart's next film Don Juan will be released in March 1998.  It is currently in post production, I can only imagine they are delaying the release for strategic reasons. Don Juan has now been released in the cinema.

An article in YOU magazine part of the Mail on Sunday (now when are they going to go on line?  I know it is a female paper in general but this technophobia is amazing), recently mentioned her.  (2 Nov 1997).  "Bébé Watch" by Josephine Fairly.  You can probably photocopy it from your local (UK) library (you may need to ask as it is from a few weeks ago).  There is one full page picture (BW) and one small (BW).  The article discusses how the french sex appeal (smoking, scowling and swearing), has become iresistable to Hollywood (Yeah, it's about time they grew up).   Also mentioned are the other french stars: Julliette Binoche (2nd ever oscar winner), Julie Delpy, Sophie Marceau, Ophélie Winter (no I don't know who she is either, formally none as girlfriend to prince), Elsa Zylberstein, Béatrice Dalle.  The quote from Emmanuelle is:

"There is, for us French, a certain magic in all this stuff from the United States - being treated like a princess, all this grandeur,"

So Miss Fairly thinks Hollywood love the French actreses, and thinks there will be far more of the inteligent french actress roles in future (ie. not dumb babes as in Mission: Impossible).  I wonder if this is really fact or hope?  I think it is the audience who love these actesses, my all english web site (and mainly english speaking visitors attests to that).  Hollywood is well know to be audience driven, if we want to see it in enough numbers they will make the film and sell you the T-shirt.  The problem is the scripts are just not there, French actresses like English ones are more than just a face with a few years acting behind them.  I hope the French and English get more of a chance in the casting for Hollywood Movies, most of them have a lot of talent but are unfortunate enough not to have Hollywood big bucks behind them.  My hope is that in the big British cinema revival that is happening we will get the money to produce films for the likes of Emmanuelle Beart.

I am uncertain where Emmanuelle Béart is at present and what she is doing.  As I occasionally see dior adverts with her in I imagine she is still "the face of dior".  Maybe she is at home looking after the kids?  Anyone that knows diffrent, I would value your input! 



Date: Feb:
Source: Elle Magazine, French edition 10 Feb 1997 (Thanks Barbara)

News: Emmanuelle Beart is on the front cover of the French version of ELLE magazine (10th Feb), several great pictures and an interview. The interview concerns the loss (or non renewal at least) of her contract with Dior (below), which was caused by her protest against the deportation of immigrants, you may have seen some of the news reports including center pages in the mail on sunday, in which she was arrested and removed from a church. Apparently the great sin to Dior was being seen not wearing any makeup. The mail on sunday was particularly harsh in contrasting pictures of her in the arms of the police and those of a recent photo shoot, the haggard mum look verses the super model.


Date:
Source:

News: Dior took Emmanuelle on because she is wild and classy, a babe with intelligence... Personally I think she looked pretty good even with no make up on, you cannot hide a beautiful face. I think it says a lot for her that she does not feel she has to wear make up. It also says a lot that she can risk her career for something she believes in.


Date: 9 December 1996:
Source:

News: Emmanuelle attended a party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to celebrate 50 years of the fashion house of Christian Dior. 850 guests were present, including Princess Diana and Isabelle Adjani. Emmanuelle has an advertising contract with Dior.


Date: December:
Source:

News: Emmanuelle is currently appearing on stage in Paris in Strindberg's 'Jouer avec le feu', directed by Luc Bondy. First night was December 12th, at the Theatre des Bouffes-du-Nord. The production has already been seen in Lausanne in October and Nice in November, and has received excellent reviews. The play is about a husband and wife who discover they no longer love each other, while a second couple break up in an explosion of hatred. Emmanuelle's co-stars are Pascal Greggory (pictured here with Emmanuelle), Francoise Brion and Thierry Fortineau. Emmanuelle's last theatrical appearance was in 1993, in 'On ne badine pas avec l'amour' with Jean-Pierre Vincent.


Date:
Source:

News: Additionaly this play came to England for one week (Nottingham Playhouse), I only found out after I read the review in the Sunday Times which said it had sadly finished already but was otherwise brilliant.


Date: 19 June 1996:
Source:

News: Emmanuelle traveled to the desert regions of Mauritania as a special ambassador of UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund: 'When UNICEF asked me to support their work, I immediately accepted. I have been deeply concerned about the welfare of these children.'


Date: October 1996:
Source:

News: A short film for the French TV channel Canal+, 'Le dernier chaperon rouge', was premiered on October 4th. Directed by Jan Kounen, the film is a musical adaption of the 'Little Red Riding Hood' tale, with Emmanuelle in the title role.


Date: 13 April 1997:
Source: The SundayTimes 13 April.
Link:http://www.the-times.co.uk

News:

Acting up

Emmanuelle Béart famously loathes interviews, and her agent made me promise in writing that I wouldn't ask questions about her politics. But as those politics, which recently almost lost Béart her contract as the face of Dior, were the reason I wanted to interview her in the first place, this threatened to put a bit of a dampener on events.

Béart is big in France. She found fame at 20 as the exquisite goat-herd in Manon des Sources and now she's up there with Juliette Binoche and Isabelle Adjani. Last year, she starred in her first Hollywood movie, Mission Impossible, with Tom Cruise. At the moment, however, Béart is doing theatre. She is touring Europe with a Strindberg play and you can catch her in, of all places, the Nottingham Playhouse next month. The production is called Playing with Fire and it seems an apt metaphor for the controversy currently surrounding the actress.

Two weeks ago it was reported that Dior wanted to drop Béart as the 'face' of their cosmetics range because of her outspoken political views and despite the fact that her contract has another year to run. The magazine Voici claimed that Dior wanted to cancel the contract after Béart was photographed without make-up and with untidy hair during demonstrations on behalf of immigrants. 'The actress no longer conforms to the brand name's chic image,' it pronounced. The story was swiftly denied by both sides, although Francois Beaufume, Dior's couture chief, would not say whether Béart's contract would be renewed after next year.

France's love affair with Béart started to go wrong last August, when a group of illegal immigrants threatened with deportation sought refuge in the Saint Bernard church in Paris. Béart took on the role of their guardian angel, camping at the church with them night after night and, when the police finally came, chaining herself to the railings. In February this year she marched at the front of a demonstration against the government's tough new immigration laws.

Béart the protester couldn't have been further from the flawless creature on her Dior make-up posters. She wore grungy sweaters, no make-up and a rubber band in her stringy hair. In doing so, she broke two cardinal sex symbol rules: one, look beautiful at all times, and two, keep your mouth shut.

When I finally met Béart, I half-expected her to storm out of the room at the slightest provocation. A friend of hers had warned me that she 'is totally paranoid about the press and cannot stand criticism'. But the Béart I encountered offered me tea and cigarettes and seemed quite happy to discuss
taboo subjects. Particularly her politics.

For our interview, Béart's face was totally bare. I gazed hard, but there was no trace of lipstick or mascara, let alone foundation or blusher. Her hands were innocent of both nail varnish and jewellery and her hair was scraped back. However, she wore a tailored brown trouser suit that epitomised understated chic and a neat pair of lace-up boots. Nothing, in short, that her masters at Dior could complain about.

At 33, Béart has fine lines etched around her trademark enormous blue eyes. Deep, azure ponds across which a variety of emotions ripple, they register a child-like vulnerablity that makes grown men tremble and women want to reach out, pat her knee and assure her that everything will be all right.

Things clearly were not, though. Béart was still smarting from the criticism of her political activism. Her barefaced cheek on the streets of Paris, she told me, had brought a deluge of hate mail, anonymous phone threats and snide remarks in the press. Béart is keen to stress that she is 'not political or anti-government. I was just protesting against something that I thought was unjust'.

As well as the press, Unicef were quick in the wake of the Béart bleeding-heart bandwagon. Three months ago, the actress became a Unicef ambassador-at-large. 'I told them I didn't just want to be a media figurehead but wanted to do real work.' And she seems to mean it. After she finishes a film with the director Yves Angelo this autumn, Béart will fly to Burkina-Faso, where Unicef is organising a programme against female circumcision.

'I'm more proud and I like myself better when I do something for Unicef than if I achieve something in the cinema,' she says, fixing me with those hypnotic eyes. 'It's a deeper, more satisfying feeling.' Realising this might sound a little worthy, she stops and smirks. 'Look, I'm not Mother Teresa or Sister Emmanuelle. I'm really quite a narcissist. The fact is, I spent 12 years looking at my navel, thinking about my hair and my nails and I needed to balance that out.'

The turning point, it seems, was motherhood. Béart has a five-year-old daughter, Nelly, from her 10-year relationship with Daniel Auteuil, her co-star in Manon des Sources and Un Coeur en Hiver. And 10 months ago Johan arrived, Béart's son by her current boyfriend, David Moreau, with whom she shares her Left Bank apartment. 'The birth of my two children awakened something inside me,' says Béart. 'It gave me the strength to hold out my hand to others. How can you teach your own children the meaning of solidarity if you don't practise it yourself?' 


Although the hysteria of the French press may suggest otherwise, politically active actresses are hardly unknown ð 'Hanoi' Jane Fonda and her anti-Vietnam protests, and Vanessa Redgrave, sometime champion of the Workers' Revolutionary Party, are but two that spring to mind. The roots of Béart's own social conscience can be traced back to her mother, Genevieve, a former model, actress and activist for the homeless. 'My mother was always looking after other people. She would make us give up our beds for complete strangers.' She pauses and looks at her hands, reflecting. 'For years I resented my mother's do- gooding and now I'm becoming like her myself.'

Béart, however, seems to have no intention of sacrificing her career for her new-found political convictions. And that career, once so brilliant, seems to have had a few hiccups of late. As well as l'affaire Dior, there is the fact that Mission Impossible, the film that promised to help Béart achieve that most difficult of feats for a French actress, the conquering of Hollywood, conspicuously failed to deliver. By contrast, Juliette Binoche has just triumphed in Tinseltown, collecting an Oscar for The English Patient.

Béart, of course, says she's thrilled for Binoche. I examine her face for a hint of jealousy, but detect none (after all, Béart is an actress). She says she'd like to do more Hollywood movies but 'I'm too old to move to Los Angeles, I'm not ambitious enough, and I haven't been sent any decent scripts'.

Béart affects matter-of-factness about Mission Impossible. 'I didn't have high expectations, so I wasn't disappointed. This was never going to be my greatest role, but it was my first American film and I saw it as an adventure.' If she has any regrets it's that she wasn't good in it. 'I was very mediocre,' she sighs, batting her huge blue eyes. 'I was a bit lost. A little French girl just off the boat, caught up in an American machine. I think I'd rather do a British movie. It would be less of a culture shock.'

As the interview draws to an end Béart finally decides to discuss her work with Dior. Slipping into PR mode, she declares that she is 'still Dior's ambassador and it's a very important part of my life' (and her income, no doubt). She then waxes lyrical about John Galliano, the Dior designer. 'I love him, his insolence, romanticism, sensuality. His last collection was sublime,' she trills dutifully.

So, I ask, how does she square the vapid world of haute couture and her work with starving children in Africa? Béart draws herself up and flares her fine-as-china nostrils. 'People may not find this logical,' she says. 'But it doesn't matter. There is no logic.' With that, she sweeps her cigarettes off the
table, shakes my hand and strides briskly out of the room.


Date: 25 August 1996:
Source: The Sunday Times 25 August 1996
Link:http://www.the-times.co.uk

News:

French lawyers scramble to stop deportations

Kirsty Lang in Paris

LAWYERS for a group of immigrants from Africa seized in a controversial raid on a Paris church tried yesterday to block their deportation with a barrage of appeals.

The immigrants were detained on Friday when police armed with axes smashed down the door of a church where they had sought sanctuary from expulsion in a seven-week protest. Pending the outcome of lawyers' appeals, a first group of 50 were due to be flown from Paris to Mali. Other deportations are expected soon.

Three hundred African immigrants, including women, children and babies, had sought sanctuary in the Catholic church of St Bernard in Paris. The protesters attracted support from celebrities including Danielle Mitterrand, widow of the late president, and Emmanuelle Béart, the actress.

Béart, who spent a week sleeping in the church, had vowed to handcuff herself to one of the hunger strikers if police broke into the church. But she was in a cafe when police arrived and missed most of the action.

After the immigrants were taken away, several thousand supporters marched through Paris in protest. In the early hours of yesterday morning there were clashes between protesters and riot police outside the detention centre where they were being held.

Ten hunger strikers who had vowed they would rather die than be deported received medical treatment yesterday in a military hospital under police guard. A spokesman for the charity Medecins du Monde said there was no question of them being deported in their current condition, described as 'weak' but not critical.

All the women and children who took part in the church protest were quietly released on Friday evening. The government said it would review their cases. About 30% of the immigrants are expected to be allowed to stay.

Opposition leaders accused Alain Jupp‚, the prime minister, of wooing the far right. But the government said the deportations were to deter Africans in former French colonies from trying to enter the country illegally.

'Many people are watching what is happening in France in Bamako, Libreville and Kinshasa,' said Eric Raoult, the minister in charge of integration. 'France does not have a limitless capacity to take everyone.'

France has an immigrant population of up to 5m. Until three years ago it was relatively easy to gain residency permits and entitlement to benefits. With unemployment at more than 12% and support rising for the National Front, the government began a programme of forced deportations two years ago.

To soften the blow, each deportee is given Ff1,000 (œ130). Once in their country of origin, they can apply to the French embassy for grants of up to Ff25,000 (œ3,300) to set up a farm or business.

The violent police raid on a religious sanctuary in the full glare of television cameras was a calculated political risk, but one that the government felt was worth taking. The order apparently came directly from Jacques Chirac, the president, who has vowed to clamp down on illegal immigration.


Date: 1 September 1996:
Source: The Sunday Times, 1 september 1996
Link:http://www.the-times.co.uk

News:

Chirac concentrates on positive thoughts

President Jacques Chirac's holiday reading seems to have included a tome on the power of positive thinking. While his countrymen trudge back from their holidays convinced they face an autumn of riots, strikes and economic hardship, the president is telling them all is well.

On Wednesday, in a pep talk to cabinet ministers, he said: 'You have every reason to be miserable, but I'm ordering you not to be.'

Chirac will be in Bonn today meeting Chancellor Kohl. The Elys‚e has been keen to emphasise that this is not a crisis meeting, just a regular 'tˆte-…-tˆte'. However, the German chancellor is expected to grill Chirac on whether France really is on target for the two countries to bind their economies together in 1999, as foreseen by the Maastricht criteria.

Chirac will no doubt repeat what he said on Thursday ð when the franc began to slide: 'France will be at the rendezvous and will respect the timetable.' But the gnomes of London ð as Alain Jupp‚, the French prime minister, once dubbed the City money dealers ð are not convinced.

They have added the predicted social welfare deficit, which stands at three times the original target of Fr17 billion (œ2.18 billion) set last au tumn, to the forecasts for economic growth, down to 1.3% instead of the 2.8% the government had hoped for.

They grimly concur that if Jupp‚ is to meet the Maastricht criteria for a single currency he will have to make massive spending cuts in the budget on September 10. This, it could be reasoned, means more strikes and even slower economic growth, followed by failure to meet Maastricht.

Chirac and Kohl may indulge in some creative accounting so their countries will be ready for monetary union. Perhaps the two leaders should put their faith in positive thinking instead.

* It is not only British lorry drivers who have something to fear from marauding French farmers. French MPs from rural constituencies have been advised to avoid harvest festivals. Les fetes de village, which take place on the last weekend of August, are usually harmless affairs in which locals
drink pastis and waltz around the village square to accordion music. The bucolic celebrations are a last opportunity for MPs to press the flesh with voters before returning to Paris for the beginning of the parliamentary session. This year, however, the prime minister is said to have warned MPs
that they risk being taken hostage by angry beef farmers demanding compensation for loss of sales during the BSE crisis.

Béart's chain reaction

* When Emmanuelle Béart, the actress, threatened to chain herself to one of 300 Africans protesting about moves to deport them, there was scarcely a man in France who did not for a moment wish that he, too, was an illegal immigrant.

Yet it has emerged that the government was deeply perturbed by the prospect of the pouting Béart and other celebrities swaying public opinion in favour of the immigrants. So much so that Jacques Chirac, the president, ordered aides to find out whether G‚rard Depardieu was planning to put in an appearance at the barricades.

Chirac was relieved to hear that France's most popular actor was unable to lend his considerable weight to the protest, which was halted by police a week ago.

Depardieu, it turned out, was filming in New York.

* The frying pan could replace the hammer and sickle in the French Communist party's battle against international capitalism. Marc Veyrat, the three-star Michelin chef from Annecy, told the party's summer festival: 'Good working-class dishes such as r“ti de porc-pur‚e [roast pork and mashed potatoes] are our best weapon against the American cultural invasion.' It may be too late for another dish linked to revolutionaries: tˆte de veau (calves' brains) is banned from many restaurants because of 'mad cow' disease.

* Bernard Tapie, the disgraced businessman and socialist politician, was so encouraged by his acting debut in a Claude Lelouch film that he is looking to Hollywood. He has resigned as an MP and hopes for the lead role in a film about Che Guevara.


Date: 1 April 1997:
Source: The Telegraph 1st April 1997
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk

News:

Actress's migrant campaign puts Dior deal at risk
By Susannah Herbert in Paris

1st april
'De Gaulle spirit' invoked by leader of National Front

FRANCE'S most politically committed actress may lose her lucrative contract with Christian Dior because she is more than just a pretty face, a report claimed yesterday.

Emmanuelle Béart, 30, who was dragged from a Paris church last August after adopting the cause of 300 illegal immigrants camped inside, has become the figurehead of resistance to France's immigration laws. More recently, pictures of her brimming eyes, unbrushed hair and scruffy raincoat dominated coverage of February's march against the government.

The magazine Voici says her activism has dismayed Dior's marketing men. It reports that Bernard Arnault, of LVMH, the conglomerate that owns Dior, has decided that Miss Béart's contract will not be renewed at the end of the year. Her replacement, it says, is thought to be Isabelle Adjani, the actress who, although older, is more amenable to the industry's requirements and is less controversial. Ms Adjani, who appeared alongside John Galliano, Dior's new designer, at the opening of the Metropolitan Museum's Dior exhibition in New York in December, will be wearing the designer's clothes in May as president of the Cannes Film Festival jury.

What does Dior have against Emmanuelle? An accumulation of little things which mean that she no longer conforms to the brand name's chic image,' Voici said yesterday. 'Even if no one in the couture house would dream of reproaching her for her engagement with humanitarian causes, some reckon she is less and less available. Others lament that she appears in public without having her hair done or wearing any make-up. . . In short, she's neglecting her image.'

Ms Béart's alleged errors include a reluctance to perform the chores required of her, such as visiting factories, and a refusal to endorse products that do not appeal to her. Although neither Miss Béart nor Dior's spokesman was available for comment yesterday, the actress said last week that she did not want to spend her life in the fashion pages of magazines.


Date: 24 August 1996:
Source: The Telegraph 24 August 1996
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk

News:

Les luvvies are stealing the show

Suzanne Lowry explains why film stars are fighting for the African hunger strikers in a Paris church

IN THE somnolent indifference of a French August, the plight of more than 300 African Illegal immigrants skulking in a Parisian church had scarcely caused a ripple among the vacationing political classes.

Even the nation's heavy brigade of Leftie intellectuals, usually quick to avail themselves of an opportunity for grand polemics, seemed loath to leave their poolsides to challenge the government's 'firmness' and determination summarily to deport many of the squatters under tough new immigration rules.

Madame Danielle Mitterrand, widow of the late Socialist president, turned up to offer solace, but she would do that, wouldn't she? Aside from her, however, there was a general ambivalence: people want an end to illegal immigration and know that this will mean some will have to suffer.

Professor Leon Schwarzenberg, cancer specialist and former health minister, who was trying to raise public support for the Africans, was in despair and deeply concerned for 10 immigrants for whom yesterday was the 46th day of a hunger strike.

As if by a miracle his prayers were answered by an eruption of glamour and social conscience. Enter the luvvies. Emmanuelle Béart, the elfin star of such films as Manon des Sources and La Belle Noiseuse (The Noisy Beauty), arrived to declare that she was 'ashamed of her country' and has bedded down with the immigrants since Friday. More importantly she has been posing for photographers with the women, her great limpid eyes brimming with anguish.

Béart and another actress, Marina Vlady, were among those who chained themselves to the immigrants in a symbolic show of solidarity.

Vlady, who is the daughter of Russian immigrants and a veteran campaigner for the homeless, raised the metaphorical standard of Libert‚. She spoke not in Leftie jargon but of the high values of the Republic 'for which my father came to fight in 1915'.

Hardly the revolutionary rhetoric of Jean-Paul Sartre or any of the French Marxists of yesteryear, but Vlady's anger and Béart's beauty seem to have woken up the Left. Sensing themselves upstaged by les luvvies, almost every sect and splinter group is scrambling to issue statements in support of the immigrants.

The Socialist Party leader, Lionel Jospin, formerly reluctant to discuss the issue at all, weighed in heavily yesterday, as did Communist and trade union spokesmen. Even Right-wingers, made nervous by the prospect of opposing a potent alliance of beautiful women and bleeding hearts, has called for a 'pragmatic' solution to the problem.

French luvvies are not a heavily politicised group, and unlike their British counterparts they are not all lined up on the Left

Only the Gaullist RPR - the party of President Chirac and Prime Minister Alain Jupp‚ - was left to support uncritically the hard-line policy of the Minister of the Interior, Jean-Louis Debr‚. Every politician knows that he will come off second best in a television confrontation on these issues with the likes of Béart. Those who are canny, or perhaps cynical, are thus vying to be on the side of the angels.

French luvvies are not a heavily politicised group, and unlike their British counterparts they are not all lined up on the Left. Nevertheless, anyone in showbusiness wields enormous emotive power in the republic, thanks to their omnipresence in the weekly magazines and on the small screen. In a country without royals, actresses play the role of tender- hearted princesses.

Brigitte Bardot, the doyenne, still has pulling power but she cares only for animals. Isabelle Adjani, long a passionate defender of desperate causes, has faced hostile crowds in Algeria to plead for peace and justice there and has defended Salman Rushdie.

Sophie Marceau, France's favourite girl next door who is currently making Anna Karenina in St Petersburg, used to demonstrate (with Bardot) against dove-shooting in the Gironde and against bull-fighting in Provence - although the sight of the blood at a recent Feria made her faint clean away.

Increasingly, the luvvies understand their power and know how to be appealing and therefore more effective. Those people either in power or seeking it are acting accordingly. It helped boost President Chirac's election campaign last year when he snared important support from actors and intellectuals by his promises to help the poor and disadvantaged and heal the social fracture.

Now the wheel has turned full circle and he could suffer a luvvie backlash for allowing the government's tough law-and-order policy on immigration to take precedence over humanitarian concerns. More likely, he could choose to intervene over the heads of his ministers and defuse a dangerously emotional - and theatrical - situation.


Date: 17 May 1996
Source: The Telegraph 17 May 1996
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk

News:

Fragile, intense - and very French

Why do the actresses Adjani, Binoche and Béart seem to be clones? asks Susannah Herbert

IF A COUNTRY's choice of screen sirens tells you anything about its dream female, then the women of France have a problem. When it comes to cinematic role models, there's currently only one available; a wilful, passionate brunette with welling eyes and intellectual leanings, personified by that almost interchangeable trio of French actresses, Isabelle Adjani, Emmanuelle Béart and Juliette Binoche.

This week, Adjani, president of the Cannes Film Festival jury, is the one in the ascendant. Gone are the days when the photographers of Cannes - furious at her refusal to pose for photo-shoots - turned their backs as she stalked up the festival's red carpeted steps. Now, in top-to-toe couture, la belle Adjani's slim figure and smiling face adorn almost every glossy magazine cover.

France loves to tut-tut over the behaviour of its cinematic grandes dames, and their little crises are accorded the kind of attention that the British reserve for Diana, Princess of Wales. But although the three 'ideal brunettes', as they have been labelled in the French press, please most when they are elegantly anguished, there is a strictly policed ban on any displays of excessive individuality.

It's fine to be a single mother (they all are); it's compulsory to talk about 'being true to my art' (they all do); and posing with a book in your hand is almost de riguer, particularly if the hair and make-up are done first. But to stay the nation's sweetheart, conformity to the French ideal of fragile, intense femininity is essential.

It is an image which Binoche, the sunniest of French cinema's moon- faced clones and the only Oscar- winner among them, is careful never to shatter. A convent-educated, former shop- assistant with artistic aspirations inherited from her sculptor father and actress mother, she fights with film directors only about important things, such as scripts. Nudity doesn't worry her, or her fans.

As a consequence, she is the best- loved of the big three: a blank, often naked, canvas. Need an emotionally-wounded survivor (Three Colours: Blue, The English Patient) or an enigmatic European sexpot (Damage, The Unbearable Lightness of Being)? Send for Binoche and wait for reviews laden with adjectives such as 'luminous' and 'radiant'.

Béart, Binoche's nearest rival in the radiance stakes, may have more 'temperament' and bigger lips, but is none the less cast from the same fragile-intense mould. Unlike Binoche, however, the pouting star of Manon des Sources has carried this intensity over into real life, with the result that she is now, after a much- publicised difference with her employer Christian Dior, the beauty industry's first martyr and the most out of favour of the three clones.

Béart's 'offence' was twofold. First, she marched ungroomed through Paris in the company of down-and-outs; then she publicly proclaimed her preference for the 'smell of skin' over the perfumes she is paid to promote. It's all very well seeming 'committed', but as Béart learnt, not without some lipstick and a smile. Binoche, the face of Lanc“me, would never make the same mistake.

Adjani, who is rumoured to be in the running for Béart's Dior contract, learnt conformity the hard way. Ten years ago, when in full 'committed' mode, she flew to Algeria to protest against human-rights abuses. Declaring herself proud to be the daughter of an Algerian garage-mechanic - a controversial statement in certain French circles - she paid the price when rumours circulated around Paris that she was dying, or dead, of Aids.

Since then, Adjani has toned down her act. In interviews these days, she alternates between vaguely philosophical introspection ('There is always a dramatic path towards the blossoming of femininity. . .') and beauty and diet tips.

Unlike Béart, Adjani claims to adore perfume, keeping bottles of her favourite scent in her kitchen, her office, even the hallway of her Swiss house. 'Spraying them on is like leaning over a flower,' she burbles in Elle magazine this week.

Her pet cause is no longer Algeria, but that irreproachable Miss World vote-winner: children's rights. 'We forget too often that children are the adults of tomorrow.' '

I am,' she declared recently without a hint of self-mockery, 'sincere, generous and independent, with a sense of humour. I am a passionate woman, similar to the romantic heroines I've played. In real life, I've been like a heroine forced to confront torment.'

This oblique reference to her unhappy six-year love-affair with the British actor Daniel Day-Lewis, who abandoned her when she was pregnant with their son Gabriel Kane, is a Gallic masterstroke; you can't imagine an English actress - Emma Thompson, say - appealing so brazenly for our sympathy.

But then, the French wouldn't know what to make of Thompson if she were theirs. Her hair is not dark enough, her tongue is too far embedded in her cheek and her eyes refuse to well. Worst of all, she has yet to learn the art of the Gallic pout.


Date: 10 May 1996
Source: The Telegraph 10 May 1996
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk

News:

Some seriously sexy Strindberg
By Kate Bassett
Playing with Fire at the Nottingham Playhouse

NOTTINGHAM Playhouse is a beacon attracting international productions to our shores. German-born Luc Bondy's staging of Playing with Fire - Strindberg's portrait of entangled sexual attractions coming to a head on an ordinary summer morning - is the finest theatrical work I've seen this year. Bondy's surtitled French cast gave a performance that was hushed, slow-burning and gripping.

Such was the intensity of the infatuations and power games played out between Kerstin (magnetic Emmanuelle Béart, she of Manon des Sources, her childlike beauty combined with calculating allure); her artist husband Knut (Laurent Gr‚vill, externally casual, internally wounded); the bitter AdŠle (Christine Vouilloz); and Knut's friend Axel (Thierry Fortineau, with a gentle victimised air yet a trace of the predator). Watching their suppressed passions building up and going down in flames was like having a low-voltage current pass through you for an unbroken 70 minutes.

We were outside by the sea with the distant sound of the surf and crying gulls. This place had the air of an idle summer holiday with a hint of imminent searing heat and isolation. In Richard Peduzzi's design, sunlight cut in at a low angle, catching the white weatherboarding of Knut's father's house which disappeared vertically out of sight.

People poured coffee, turned the wireless on and off (the era was somewhere between the mid-20th century and today). They lit cigarettes, smoothed the white tablecloth. Their gestures seemed oblique, cool. However, every movement suggested smothered desire: Axel, eyes following AdŠle, Knut reaching to turn the music down under Kerstin's legs. The spaces and silences between the characters - though nearly wrecked by noisy air conditioning - crackled with tension.

With this play Strindberg is characteristically exploring tortured relationships with implications of malignancy - he wrote it in 1892, after the break-up of his first marriage - but what is breathtaking is the exquisite naturalism brought out by the cast's body language (the surtitles were annoyingly inaccurate by comparison). The action was free of melodrama and full-blown expressionism, yet still creepy as everyone padded about soundlessly, appearing round corners. This was tickling, seriously sexy and increasingly fraught with pain.

Strindberg's long-bypassed play comes across as a masterpiece. The bad news: this production was a flying visit and ended on Saturday.


Date: 22 February 1997
Source: The Telegraph 22 Febuary 1997
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk

News:

Saturday 22 February 1997

Issue 638

Rally to oppose migrants Bill is a cause c‚lŠbre
By Susannah Herbert in Paris

FRANCE'S cultural and intellectual elite will prove this afternoon that nothing can stop a celebrity-packed bandwagon once it has started to roll.

At 3pm outside Paris's Gare de L'Est, the opponents of a proposed new Immigration Bill expect a turn-out of 50,000 protesters, each carrying a suitcase to symbolise sympathy with France's rejected immigrants. Led by the actress Emmanuelle Béart and a gang of young film-makers, the procession will be one of the great shows of the Paris season if the thousands of artists, actors, writers, cartoonists and rock stars who have signed a call for a civil disobedience campaign turn up.

Those who have lent their fame to the cause include the actresses Catherine Deneuve and Jane Birkin, the director Sir Peter Brook, the couturiers Christian Lacroix and Azzedine Alaia and the writer Fran‡oise Sagan. The new Bill, to be debated by the National Assembly on Tuesday, is designed to make it harder for anyone entering France on a short-term visa to stay on illegally after the visa expires.

Following protests, however, France's Interior Minister, Jean-Louis Debr‚, agreed this week to modify the Bill's most controversial clause which obliges citizens to report to the authorities on the movements of any guests holding short-term French visas. The clause was accused of turning France into a nation of police informers and has now been amended.

Although the government hoped that its climbdown would buy peace, the protesters have merely renewed their assault. Instead of acknowledging that their initial objections no longer apply, they have taken up the broad-brush approach, denouncing the accumulated body of France's immigration law as 'fascist'.

Worse still, the government's concession has played badly with the electorate, which is too worried about the effect of immigration on employment to appreciate inexact historical analogies. Rather than supporting the government's concession, a majority of the French population is in favour of tightening the existing controls on immigration.

In a poll published in the newspaper Lib‚ration, 59 per cent of those interviewed said they supported the Immigration Bill in its original form. The only party likely to profit from the row seems to be the anti-immigration National Front, which inevitably benefits whenever the government seems weak on immigration issues.


Date: 20 August 1996
Source: The Telegraph 20 August 1996
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk

News:

Paris media stars flock to join Mali protesters
By Julian Nundy in Paris

THE 300 illegal African immigrants camping out in a Paris church are becoming an increasing embarrassment to the French government as a growing list of media personalities supports their cause.

Ten of the Africans, the majority of whom are from Mali, began the 46th day of a hunger strike yesterday and doctors expressed concern that their condition could soon become critical.

The protest started on June 28 but only captured the public imagination a week ago when police burst into the church at dawn and took the 10 men away for for check-ups. Over the weekend it attracted a procession of famous people, headed by Danielle Mitterrand, the widow of the late president.

Her arrival at the St Bernard church near Montmartre prompted a string of other celebrities to scurry to show their sympathy for the protesters. Some of them, including Jacques Gaillot, the former Bishop of Evreux, film stars Emmanuelle Béart and Ariane Mnouchkine, and Laurent Scwartzenberg, a cancer specialist who dabbles in radical politics, have stayed overnight with the protesters, promising to handcuff themselves to an African if the police intervene to expel the immigrants.

The protesters have appealed to President Chirac, so far silent on the affair, to intervene

Meanwhile, several hundred more modest supporters outside the church have mounted a system of lookouts to head off any intervention by riot police which would almost certainly be followed by the expulsion of many of the demonstrators from France altogether.

Some of the Africans have already received orders to leave the country. Some argue that their residence situation has become illegal because of changes in immigration law over the past two years and are asking for negotiations with the government. The Interior Minister, Jean-Louis Debr‚, says the government will consider the cases only of parents of children with French nationality and humanitarian cases.

Alain Jupp‚, the Prime Minister, said his duty was 'not to send countries of emigration a signal that France has started to regularise the situation of immigrants in irregular situations'.

The protesters have appealed to President Chirac, so far silent on the affair, to intervene. Lionel Jospin, the leader of the opposition Socialist Party, said the government claimed 'to be firm . . . instead, it is stiff, it is rigid'. Mr Jospin appealed for a mediator to be appointed to defuse the situation at the church and save the hunger-strikers' lives.

Bishop Gaillot, stripped by the Pope of his diocese last year for his outspoken views on contraception and the fight against Aids, blamed the deadlock on 'the obstinacy of a little interior minister'.