Great story about Juliette Binoche in the Guardian.
At 44, unmarried but with a son by scuba diver André Halle and a daughter by actor Benoît Magimel, Binoche seems to have attained a liberating kind of self-acceptance that can only be described as wisdom. Her relationship with success, for instance, is unabashed. ‘I embrace it, because it’s a sign of outside recognition. It’s not about you personally, but allowing it to come through you is a very touching thing. It gives you a sort of humility. If you take it personally it’s another story – then you need more and more and more and it’s never enough.’ Last year, she even posed for French Playboy, though she initially refused to do nude shots and later agreed only if they were suitably abstracted. At the shoot, she disrobed and danced.
‘It’s not that I’m taking more risks but I’m less fearful,’ she tells me. ‘I stopped being the nice little obedient girl. When I started as an actress, I wanted to please so much. I think we all need to be loved. When we fail, we’re very, very hurt and behave in such a way that nobody is going to love us. There’s a moment when you’re jumping into the trust and you don’t know if you’ll be loved or not. You’ve got to dare to allow for not being loved – if you don’t dare that, you’re not an artist.’ She brings it swinging back round to acting, but for a moment, it feels like we aren’t discussing that at all.
