I did get offers from Hollywood, but they were all scripts with monsters in them. If I had done them, I would have disappeared. I would have come back to France anyway, and I would have had to start all over again and lost a lot of time.

It's like a jigsaw, there's a piece of the puzzle at the beginning and it's the only one and of course it had a lot to do with the way you look. And then you have to have the time to add pieces of the jigsaw.

I decided to be an actress, and the day after, I was an actress. That was quick and very scary at the same time. When 'Obscure Object of Desire' came out in France, I felt guilty for my friends at the National School who weren't in the movies. The whole thing was turmoil.

My characters always start well in movies. Almost every movie I've done starts with a happy marriage, it's all beautiful, wealthy, whatever... and then of course my husband leaves me, and everything falls apart.

I didn't learn a lot from books. I learned a lot from movies.

You get stared at the whole time. I first noticed that when I was about 13. I was very shy. Being considered beautiful, I always felt that people were waiting for something more. I imagined you were supposed to have an intellectual ability - and I'm making no claims here - proportional to your supposed good looks.