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Julie Delpy doesn't hold back on her attitudes to sex, politics or almost anything else. In fact, the 39-year-old blond French beauty, who started acting at 14 and is burnt in our memories as Ethan Hawke's prospective lover in Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, can be positively ribald. No wonder the Americans didn't know what to do with her.
Based in Los Angeles and spending part of each year in her hometown of Paris, Delpy says her smart and sometimes cutting sense of humour comes from her dad, Albert, who, along with her mum Marie Pillet, appear in her new film, 2 Days In Paris.
Delpy infuses this inherited sense of humour into the movie which she wrote, directed, produced, edited, composed the music for and, of course, stars in.
Plus, much of the relationship material you see in 2 Days In Paris is also taken from her real life dealings with past lovers, including on-screen beau, Adam Goldberg (whom she dated seven years ago).
She finds comedy everywhere she says.
"Even moments in my life that have been painful like a real break-up, I can't help myself," she says in her singsong French-Californian accent. "Suddenly I'm in the middle of it and the guy says a line to me and I go, `hey nice line'. I've had horrible things to deal with in my life and family, but humour is a way to make is bearable."
A talented writer, Delpy had been struggling to finance her complex period drama, The Countess, (she has written numerous screenplays over the years which failed to be made), when friends suggested she draw on her success with Before Sunset and make a low-budget movie to get everyone's attention. At the time of her Oscar win as co-writer of the film together with Hawke and director Richard Linklater, it emerged that the trio had also written Before Sunrise - however both Hawke and Delpy had failed to be credited. Now, as you watch 2 Days in Paris, you realise how much of the previous movies were Delpy's ideas. But given her film's current success, and the fact that she has finally been able to finance The Countess as a result, she is not complaining. Delpy has finally arrived - and very much on her own terms.
"It's more a comedy and not as much a romantic comedy as Before Sunset and Before Sunrise," she says. "The characters are ruder and less politically correct."
Delpy's performance as Marion, a nervy kind of woman returning to Paris after a holiday in Venice to introduce her parents to her neurotic New Yorker boyfriend Jack - who is so whiny he even disliked the city of gondolas - has been likened to Diane Keaton's pairing with Woody Allen. For one thing, Goldberg plays an Allen-esque hypochondriac.
In the movie, Marion's father decides that Jack is one of the best blokes she's brought home but when Jack has to meet her numerous ex-boyfriends, the proverbial hits the fan.
"As Jack says, private property is the most important thing in his life; if you touch his shit he'll kill you. He's pretty much like a lot of men," Delpy says. "He can be funny, intellectual, cynical, but something comes over him when he becomes jealous. Suddenly all logic goes out the window and this visceral ancestral fear men have takes over when he realises he's not the one in first."
The barbs that ensue between the couple, like almost everything in the film, are very funny but they also ring incredibly true.
"Arguing is important," Delpy says. "It puts things back to where they should be in a way. I've never seen a couple not arguing after a few years. It's not something bad; it means there's communication. So long as that's not all they do and so long as arguing ends up with sex at the end, that's fine. No, I'm kidding. You argue until you find a common ground."
Underneath all the jokes, the film is Delpy's view of what holds relationships together.
"Finding someone you love is rare, and giving up is easy," she says, suddenly becoming serious. "Other than having people close to you die, the most painful thing in life is when you look into your lover's eyes and the love is gone. To me it's total devastation."
Wherever Jack and Marion's relationship is headed when they return to New York, they have an interesting time around Paris in the meantime, as Delpy cleverly fuels their dilemma with her skewed view of Paris. Filming guerilla-style, she ventures to Fete de la Musique, a national event where anyone can play music anywhere for the day. "I hired a lot of extras," she jokes. What upset the film's French financiers was her racist depiction of Parisian cab drivers, yet as always Delpy stuck to her guns.
"Cab drivers in Paris are very specific. It comes from one time when I was in Paris for two days and I went through hell. I had to basically jump out of four cabs, because the drivers always started talking about politics and about what they thought about everything. One told me he was listening to a programme about battered wives on the radio because he'd had two wives and he'd beaten them both. The guy told me that!
"The difference is that in life I don't answer back like Marion does, because they can be violent. She's a much tougher person than I am. I'm a wimp but she fights back and it's my dream one day to do that."
As in the film, Delpy has long maintained a studio above her parents' apartment in Paris and, indeed, they look after her cat. They had briefly appeared in Before Sunset and Delpy says: "They're both wonderful actors and I've seen their work since I was born. I've never seen parts in the cinema that give them enough to do with their ability. They're very funny."
Even so, directing one's parents might stretch the nerves. "My mum was very disciplined and listened to me, while my dad was like a two-year-old, jumping around making jokes. My mum was nervous about saying she had an affair with Jim Morrison, which she never did obviously - otherwise I would be his daughter," she pauses, "and that would be great. But no, my dad's great."
It was perhaps inevitable that Delpy would end up a creative eccentric. Her other formative experience was working with non-conformist French auteur Jean-Luc Godard on three films including 1985's Detective. She was greatly influenced by his advice to forge her own path and she has done so ever since.
By the time Before Sunset premiered in Berlin in 2004, Delpy had had a brief stint on television's ER, had directed her first experimental feature, Looking For Jimmy, and was spending most of her time singing with her band.
"When you're an actor, if you find one good script a year, it's like a miracle," she said. "When you find two it's science fiction. I don't have that much work; I don't really have representation, So many people are screaming on the phone for jobs with their agents, calling directors and having sex with producers, but I don't do that. I write, I play guitar and I paint. I'm happy I do all that."
At the time, Hawke said he enjoyed "a lovely chemistry working together with Julie", but he bemoaned her lack of work offers. "People are stupid in America; there aren't that many roles for French women and Julie's so French."
It is, of course, amazing what an Oscar can do. Even if it was far from easy, Delpy was finally given the chance to make her own movie. By that time her love life had become stable. She now lives in Los Angeles with her boyfriend of four years, German composer Marc Streitenfeld.
Currently Delpy is busy preparing to film The Countess, where she will star as a real-life 16th century Hungarian aristocrat, Erzebet Bathory, whose murderous ways inspired Gothic horror stories including Bram Stoker's Dracula. According to legend, she bathed in the blood of virgins, believing it would preserve her beauty. Australia's Radha Mitchell will co-star as her friend and accomplice.
"The murders could be myth and the truth may be that she was a powerful woman who needed to be got rid of," says Delpy. "She was also a Protestant and the Catholics were worried about the Protestants taking over."
In other words, it's bound to be scandalous, whichever way the story goes. And Delpy wouldn't have it any other way.
LOWDOWN
Who: Julie Delpy
What: 2 Days In Paris
Where & when: Opens in cinemas today
Key roles: Before Sunset (2004); Before Sunrise (1995); Killing Zoe (1994); Three Colours: Red (1994); Three Colours: White (1994); Three Colours: Blue (1993)
