Interview: "I like choosing directors I work with": Oscar-winning actor Juliette Binoche
Xinhua, September 8, 2015 Adjust font size:
"I enjoy so much selecting the directors I collaborate with because then I can really share in the creative process on set," French Oscar-winning actress Juliette Binoche told Xinhua.
"If I work by myself, I would paint or do something else, but working with others, it's a co-creation for me," Binoche said during an interview during the ongoing 72nd Venice Film Festival.
Binoche won an Oscar for best supporting actress for her work in The English Patient (1996) and received an Oscar nomination for best actress for Chocolat (2000). She received three Golden Globes nominations and won the best actress award at the Venice (1993) and Cannes (2010) film festivals.
In the feature film L'attesa, by debut director Piero Messina, showing at the Venice film festival, Binoche plays the role of a mother who doesn't want to admit her son has died and instead waits for him with his girlfriend in an old Sicilian villa.
Binoche said: "When I read the script and met with Piero, I saw a great director, and felt it would be exciting to work with somebody new."
The subject and the character were interesting for Binoche. "I thought, 'this is a film I would like to do because it's about exploring in a different way the loss of a child. My character in the movie is creating a world in order to survive."
Binoche said preparing for the role was a very interesting experience because "it was like being in a dangerous place, so inside me there was a fragility, that I was using of course. This fragility helped me to go through the film."
"You have to be able to descend into the dark side of humanity in order to tell stories," she added.
"It is more important to be than to act," she said, "When I was 18, I was lucky enough to have a teacher who taught me how to touch the core of what I wanted to portray as an actor."
What all great directors have in common is a universal subject close to their heart, emotional intelligence, and trust in their actors, according to Binoche. Endit