Interview: Audrey Tautou

Not since Garbo has a star more ferociously protected her privacy. For us press, you meet Audrey Tautou and you get ‘first of all I don’t answer questions about my private life. I do my work for the film and after that I try not even to exist for the press.’

So who is Tautou – this 5ft 3in, 31-year-old Bambi, who bears a striking resemblance to Hepburn? The consolation is that it’s not simply the press she hides from – all her directors have found her incredibly committed and professional but completely enigmatic. Jean-Pierre Jeunet who ‘discovered’ her in Amelie said, ‘we are not close in real life. Everything I know about her I learned reading interviews.’ And Ron Howard, who directed her in The Da Vinci Code, agrees: ‘Audrey is a very private person.’

Five minutes in her company, however, and, though she gives away nothing, you do sense more. Jean Reno, her Da Vinci co-star and fellow Gaul got it right when he said ‘she reminds me of Edith Piaf; such a little body and yet she radiates so much energy.’ And Gaspard Ulliel who played her lover Manech in A Very Long Engagement said, ‘when you see Audrey, you just want to take her in your arms. She seems so fragile, yet she’s really a very strong person.’

And reading between the lines you do see an intelligent, shy young woman who had the tenacity to refuse to do publicity to campaign for an Oscar nomination for Amelie (for which she was a serious contender) and who evaporates between every film. Here and now she’d rather be mist – but quick, before she disappears into thin air, we worked out 20 things you didn’t know about Audrey Tautou…

Read the full interview in our June 2008 issue.
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