Binoche breaks the Barbie doll mould

By HELEN BARLOW

It would be inconceivable for an American actress to turn her back on Hollywood after winning an Oscar. Yet that is exactly what Juliette Binoche did after her Best Supporting Actress win for The English Patient.

Binoche is French - vive la difference.

She was courted by Steven Spielberg and turned down the Emannuelle Beart role in Mission Impossible, choosing instead to make three French films: The Children of the Century, Alice and Martin and The Widow of St Pierre.

Now she has made her first concession to Hollywood since The English Patient by starring in Chocolat, which was filmed in France but in English.

Binoche plays the free-spirited Vianne, a wanderer who comes to a sleepy 50s town, sets up a chocolate shop and awakens the townsfolk to the power of the confection.

"Vianne believes people can change and be happy," says Binoche. "Her magic is about liberating people and making them believe in who they are."

At the Berlin Festival on Saturday, Binoche admitted her liking for chocolate.

"It's like choosing films," she said. "At times you like sweet, at times you like bitter. Chocolate also has different layers in taste, like films."

In Chocolat, Vianne has her appetite for love aroused by a young gypsy musician, played by Johnny Depp. It's happened before - a Binoche character falling in love with a younger man. This time, however, she did not end up with her co-star in real life.

Last year Binoche had a second child with her Children of the Century co-star, Benoit Magimel, who is 10 years her junior. They live together on the outskirts of Paris, her home town.

Binoche, 36, has never married. She was previously involved with Olivier Martinez, her co-star in The Horseman on the Roof, but he apparently became too possessive for the free-spirited actress.

Then there was Daniel Day Lewis, her co-star in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and later Leos Carax, her director in Les Amants du Pont-Neuf.

It was he who began her string of tragic heroine roles and helped instil a penchant for risk-taking in the actress.

Binoche is impressively natural in person. Her glossy dark locks frame her elfin features and her skin glows with an almost porcelain sheen.

She says she is not the glamorous type.

"In Los Angeles all the women look like Barbie dolls. When you go into a restaurant it's like leafing through a beauty magazine. But it's all manufactured: makeup, eyelashes, nails and breasts."

Her radiant looks have enticed many directors to show her face in close-up as often as possible. Chocolat's Lasse Hallstrom was no exception.

"Juliette has easy access to her emotions and trusts how little the camera needs to convey an emotion," he says.

Binoche's talent to say so much with a glance, which has been compared to that of Greta Garbo, was probably most impressive in Krzysztof Kieslowski's Blue.

She found that film a pleasant change after working on Louis Malle's Damage. At the time she spoke out on French television about how bad it was to make love on screen with a wooden Jeremy Irons.

Binoche felt Damage did not have much to say and has since been careful in choosing her projects.

"I try not to calculate too much but to go on my intuition. I try not to have an idea of what should be good and what should be bad because you never know. You just know from what your heart says."

* Chocolat is screening now.