de La Presse (Canada) / par Marc-André Lussier

Ayant un personnage très complexe à défendre, Marion Cotillard n’a jamais autant «cherché» que pour son rôle dans Inception. Avec des partenaires comme Leonardo DiCaprio et le cinéaste Christopher Nolan, le travail s’est toutefois révélé passionnant.

La feuille de route impressionne. La plus «internationale» des actrices françaises travaille avec les plus grands. Après Tim Burton (Big Fish), Ridley Scott (A Good Year), Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Un long dimanche de fiançailles), Michael Mann (Public Enemies) et Rob Marshall (Nine), Marion Cotillard tourne présentement dans la Ville lumière Midnight in Paris sous la direction de Woody Allen. L’actrice est aussi pressentie pour les prochains films de Steven Soderbergh et David Cronenberg. Auparavant, elle aura joué dans deux films français (dont Les petits mouchoirs, nouvelle réalisation de son compagnon Guillaume Canet) et, surtout, aura été de l’aventure d’Inception, le film – très intriguant – de Christopher Nolan.

«Oui, ce fut toute une aventure! confie Marion Cotillard au cours d’une interview accordée à La Presse. Lors de notre toute première rencontre à Paris, Christopher m’a parlé de son concept. Le monde des rêves est si particulier que nous avons tout de suite discuté de nos rapports respectifs avec cet aspect mystérieux de la pensée humaine. Ce n’est qu’à la fin de cette discussion, déjà fascinante, qu’il m’a invitée à lire le scénario.»

L’univers du réalisateur de Memento reposant en grande partie sur les éléments visuels, cette lecture ne pouvait évidemment pas traduire d’office l’ampleur du projet, ni laisser deviner à quoi pourrait ressembler le résultat final.

«Les situations étaient déjà décrites de façon très précise dans le script mais le concept est si original qu’il était impossible de le visualiser, explique l’actrice. La première lecture se révèle ainsi un peu ardue mais l’histoire est si riche que l’on sait d’entrée de jeu à quel point l’aventure dans laquelle nous entraînera Christopher est exceptionnelle. Plus on approfondit la recherche, plus l’exercice devient intéressant. Il est bon de se perdre parfois. Un peu comme les personnages dans le film!»

Une page blanche

Dans Inception, Marion Cotillard se glisse dans la peau de la femme du protagoniste de l’histoire, interprété par Leonardo DiCaprio. À vrai dire, l’actrice doit plutôt évoquer différentes incarnations d’un même personnage, selon les niveaux de conscience dans lesquels le récit évolue.

«J’ai lu le scénario au moins une dizaine de fois», déclare celle qui, à ce jour, est la seule actrice française à avoir obtenu, grâce à La môme (La vie en rose), l’Oscar de la meilleure actrice pour un rôle joué dans la langue de Molière. «Avec un sujet aussi riche, il a fallu lire le script à plusieurs reprises pour aller au plus profond des choses et accéder à tous les détails. Un peu comme certains livres ou certains films. Qu’on a envie de relire et de revoir parce qu’on sait qu’il y aura toujours une nouvelle chose à découvrir, ou une nouvelle question à poser.»

Pour la première fois de sa carrière, Marion Cotillard a dû composer un personnage à partir d’une «page blanche». Contrairement à son habitude, elle ne pouvait au départ se raccrocher à aucune figure pour trouver une inspiration.

«La base était déjà très solide, fait-elle quand même remarquer. Mais pour donner toutes les cellules de vie à un personnage, pour l’incarner véritablement, il faut quand même partir à sa découverte. Or, mon personnage évolue dans une dimension plus nébuleuse, de sorte que je ne savais pas trop à qui rattacher cette personne au début. Ce qui rend le travail d’autant plus passionnant.»

Leo au travail

Son personnage se révélant être le fil émotif reliant tous les éléments d’une histoire complexe, Marion Cotillard a eu l’occasion de travailler en étroite collaboration avec Leonardo DiCaprio.

«Il est très stimulant de voir Leo au travail, souligne l’actrice. Surtout dans un contexte aussi particulier, avec un sujet aussi riche. C’est comme avoir la chance d’entrer dans la cuisine d’un très grand chef. Nous avons passé des heures à discuter ensemble. J’avais le sentiment de bénéficier d’un privilège exceptionnel et d’avoir accès à quelque chose de secret. On apprend toujours beaucoup à côtoyer les plus grands.»

L’actrice française, nourrie au grand cinéma américain dans son enfance, est encore étonnée de la tournure qu’a prise sa destinée.

«Jamais je n’aurais pu croire qu’un tel parcours aurait été possible pour une actrice française. Moi qui ai tant apprécié les films de Chaplin, des Marx Brothers, de Spielberg, et toutes les grandes comédies musicales américaines, me voici plongée dans un univers où plusieurs des grandes rencontres auxquelles je rêvais se sont concrétisées. Merci la vie!»

from Straight.com (Canada) / by Ian Caddell

Marion Cotillard had done something no one had done before. She had won the best actress Oscar in 2008 for the film La Vie en Rose even though she spoke French throughout the movie. She says in an L.A. hotel room that although the public was enthusiastic, there was a segment of French society that wasn’t impressed.

Watch the trailer for Inception.“I felt very supported by the French people, but from the French media it was different. I don’t read them anymore. If they think you are getting too high [on yourself], they will try to put you down.”

The U.S.–based media have been different. They’ve praised almost everything she’s done here, including Nine, which received a lot of bad reviews but won Cotillard acclaim, as well as Critics’ Choice and Golden Globe nominations. She may receive even better reviews for her latest film, Inception, which opens Friday (July 16) in Vancouver. In it, she plays the late wife of Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a man who steals from people’s dreams. To do that, he has to enter someone’s dream and find the things they are trying to hide in their subconscious. He is good at it, but he keeps running into images of his wife. His guilt over her death leads him to conclude that she is seeking revenge.

Once Cotillard had won her Oscar, Hollywood studios began to pursue her for films that called for her to play Americans. First up was Public Enemies, in which she played a woman with a French name—Billie Frechette—but a Midwestern background. She admits that when she finished the movie, she decided to wait a while before taking on another character with lots of lines and no French accent.

“It was such a hard job trying to get the American Midwest accent and knowing that I wouldn’t be 100-percent perfect,” she says. “I worked hard, but it was frustrating because I needed to find the authenticity of a role. After it was completed, I had another offer which was a beautiful offer, but I couldn’t imagine that the character would have any French flavour in her accent. I was not ready yet to go back into four months of dialect coaching to try and erase my French accent. Maybe I will go back there in the future, because it’s a challenge that I would love to succeed at, but it was really hard because I knew when I was not perfect and it was difficult to get there. I learned English when I was 12, but with a very bad English teacher who was French. He would say ‘azeef [as if]’. You really have to start very early to learn another language so that it gets into your brain and it becomes automatic. If you don’t, it’s really hard.”

Cotillard admits that although she still owns a home in Paris, she has a soft spot for the City of Angels. And she says that after making several films here, she finds herself feeling homesick when she is away. “I love it here, actually. I have had this weird thing where I have never been homesick [for Paris] because it is your home, so you know that you will always go back there. But after Inception, I spent three months here and I went back home, and although I was happy to go back home, I felt I was missing L.A., which was weird because before I came here I had a lot of clichéd ideas about it. But I happened to really fall in love with the city.”

Part of that enthusiasm can probably be traced back to the awards season of 2008. Cotillard spent a lot of time in Los Angeles between January and March, with nominations for the Screen Actors Guild and Critics’ Choice awards and wins at the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, and the L.A. Film Critics Association awards. She says that even though it was a bit overwhelming, it was among the most memorable periods in her life.

“I enjoyed it so much. It was a new experience. I didn’t expect it at all. I met so many amazing people that I had admired for many years. It was almost three months here with a movie that I loved so much, that I loved to do, and then got to share here. We [the cast and crew of La Vie en Rose] didn’t expect to travel that much with this movie. Every day was special and unique, and I had no pressure because if you don’t expect something like that, you live in the present time with your eyes open. You have this innocence. Even though I am not a little girl anymore, I felt I was entering a new world that was so positive.”

Tuesday night Marion Cotillard was a guest on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson – for the 2nd time this year and overall her 4th visit. As usual the banter between the two was hilarious and I don’t think Marion’s ever been this relaxed on TV! And we get a new glimpse of a scene with Marion in ‘Inception‘. Enjoy!

Gallery: 376 The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson – 2010, HQ Screencaptures
Video: 001 Talk Shows > Craig Ferguson

Marion was very busy promoting ‘Inception‘. On Thursday, July 8, she attended the world premiere at Odeon Leicester Square in London, England. Her dress is by US-designer Thakoon. She looked absolutely perfect, her look was so her, the wavy hair, the bohemian style of the dress and the make-up gave her a beautiful complexion. It’s definitely one of my favourite outfits of her.

Then after the press junket on Friday, she attended the Paris premiere at the Gaumont Champs Elysées on Saturday evening, July 10, looking absolutely flawless in Dior.

And yesterday, July 13, she attended the Los Angeles premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in a exquisite L’Wren Scott dress, looking – once more – breathtaking. She was spotted at the airport taking a plane back to Paris right after the premiere (she still has the same hairdo) as she’s expected on set for more ‘Midnight in Paris‘ filming.

237 ‘Inception’ World Premiere – London
126 ‘Inception’ Premiere – Paris
181 ‘Inception’ Premiere – Los Angeles

I added some more pictures of Marion Cotillard on the set of the Woody Allen directed ‘Midnight in Paris‘. There are some from last Tuesday (July 6) where she’s wearing the same costume as on Monday and a whole bunch of her with Owen Wilson from Wednesday (July 7).

047 Midnight in Paris (2011) > On Set

from Film.com / by Cole Haddon

Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and more!

In the third and final installment of my interviews with the cast and filmmakers behind Inception, I sat down with Leonard DiCaprio’s co-stars — Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, and Marion Cottilard. In the movie, DiCaprio leads a team of, let’s call them, “dream-raiders” who navigate the dreaming world for profit. Gordon-Levitt, Page, and Hardy serve as members of this team, while Murphy — who previously worked with writer-director Christopher Nolan on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight — plays their … what would you call him? Mark is probably the term most often used in heist movies, which, at its heart, Inception turns out to be.

Cole Haddon: What was the collaborative process like once you guys came aboard? It’s such a detailed, rule-driven movie that it doesn’t seem like there was a lot of room for fun on set.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: One thing I’ll say is that one of my favorite parts of working for Chris [Nolan] is that, as well thought out as everything was, he leaves room for spontaneity in the day, both from the side of the camera, that he and [cinematographer[ Wally [Pfister] work together in this very kind of organic way, and as well as from the actors. It’s nice to not feel like you’re just re-enacting a preconceived moment, but there’s room for an organic feeling to develop while the camera is rolling. Even amidst these enormous technical productions, Chris always prioritized making sure that sort of spontaneous and organic feeling could happen at the moment.

CH: There’s a moment where Ellen’s character expresses confusion about where they are and whose dream they’re in — since all your characters eventually begin moving through layers upon layers of dreams. Dreams within dreams, so to say. In terms of shooting this film, were there ever any moments where it was so complex and involved that it became confusing to you, too?

Tom Hardy: For me, personally, it was easy to orientate which dream sequence I was in because of my costume. If in doubt, I could just look at my shoes and say, “Oh, I know which dream I’m in!”

JGL: And also, if you’re doing it right, you spend a lot of time thinking about every scene in every movie you do. I enjoy putting some thought into it before we roll camera. But you mean in the order it was shot? Well, no, movie logistics never really allow you to do anything but shoot the way the budget dictates.

CH: Ellen, Marion, how have you described this movie to your friends? It’s such a trip, I imagine it’s not easy.

Ellen Page: I say that actually I just want them to forget, just please, don’t ask questions and don’t look at anything and just please go see it. I’m the last person to tell my friends to go see something I’m in. I could care less if friends of mine never saw anything I’m in. But this is definitely a film that I’m just so thrilled about, and I’m more thrilled about the fact that everybody seems so excited and I just feel so grateful to be in a Christopher Nolan film, let alone this film. So typically, yes, I’m of the mind that I love how Chris does the quote-unquote secrecy, but I wish — I’m so young that I’ve been in a time when everything is on the Internet. Sometimes I see a trailer and I’m thrilled to say that I’ve just seen the whole movie without paying for it [laughs]. So I actually go the route of just don’t ask — and don’t sniff around. Just have an absolute blast and an exciting, cerebral time when you see it.

Marion Cotillard: It’s almost the same [for me]. I love to go and see movies where you don’t know anything about it, so I didn’t say anything [to my friends]. I still don’t, and yeah, you can feel that people are excited about this movie, and it’s a good thing, and I mean, I saw it and I love it, and I’m pretty confident that you don’t have to say much to enjoy it.

CH: Cillian, this is your third movie with Chris. Has he changed much as a director now that he’s one of the biggest filmmakers in the world?

Cillian Murphy: There’s no inside scoop really. I’ve been very lucky to work with Chris three times now, briefly on The Dark Knight. It’s always a real privilege and a real pleasure. This [time around] was particularly exciting [because I got] to work with this great bunch of actors, and the character was sort of something new for me. It was really interesting to explore [him] because I guess in terms of the film, of the structure of the film, he’s like the mark — but he’s got a lot more layers to him. He’s a lot more complex than what you’d see in a traditional heist film. So it’s great to talk to Chris, and to explore what we can bring from that character, because he does sort of by accident get to work stuff out, the relationship with his father and things. That was great and it was a brilliant experience. The atmosphere and the environment that you get on a Chris Nolan film … is one where you feel very safe and very confident and able to experiment with characters. It’s a great place to be as an actor.

CH: Now, Ellen, your character Ariadne has a great intellectual curiosity that gets her involved in some pretty heavy stuff. What subject matter turns you on, and might make you risk your life because you’re so interested in it?

EP: I guess, probably, the environmental movement, and the sustainability of our planet — which freaks me out. Definitely scares me, but I try not to be scared and just present. But that would probably be it.

CH: Tom, how did you enjoy your action scenes? You get to play a kind of dream James Bond, I’d say.

TH: The pleasure was that there wasn’t actually that much, to be honest, with me. So I felt I’d just come off a cage fighting film, and I’d been pretty badly beaten up. I was a bit broken. I had broken toes and ribs and wrist. It was nice to wear nice suits, and have a tan, and sort of slippers and cardigans. It wasn’t until the end of the shoot when we went to Calgary that they wrote in a couple of extra Ski-doo scenes and introduced me to a pair of skis for the first time in my life, and then tied me to the back of the Ski-doo in desperation to get the shot as quickly as possible, and expediently sent me up to the top of the mountain and then down it several times, giving me claymores and hand grenades and a rifle and I went back to business — which I enjoyed thoroughly.

CH: And, Joseph, you’re the star of what’s probably the movie’s most spectacular action sequence — a zero-g fight that seems as inspired by Fred Astaire as The Matrix. How did you prepare for it?

JGL: It was just about the most fun I’ve ever had on a movie set. It was also, probably, the most pain I’ve ever been in on a movie set, physically, but you know, pain in a good way, like in the way I guess athletes must get when they have to put on their pads, and they tape up their ankles, and they get a little beat up throughout the day. But that’s just part of slamming yourself into walls and jumping around all day. I was really grateful to the whole stunt team. Tom Struthers, who Chris has worked with before, he and his guys really took me in and taught me a lot and let me do it, because I’ve had the opposite experience, where stunt teams can be a little demeaning — not demeaning, but, exclusionary towards actors. To speak to your Fred Astaire comparison, I get a kick out of that, ’cause [you're] talking about … this dance sequence in a Fred Astaire movie from 50 years ago? OK, longer ago than that where it’s a similar effect, and I was thinking about it, and I came up with an analogy. Because Inception does contain a similar technique, and it’s sort of how Sesame Street and Star Wars both use Jim Henson puppetry? [Laughs]. It’s similar technique, but to very different effect.

Want more about Inception? Haven’t delved deep enough into the dreaming subconscious yet? Well, check out what Christopher Nolan and Leonardo DiCaprio had to say about making the movie.

I’m back from my travels for a few days so I’ll be doing my best to catch up on what’s going on in Marion Cotillard’s world. To begin, some additional HQ pictures of her during the Los Angeles ‘Inception‘ Press Conference in Los Angeles last month. To know what was being said during the Press Conference you can listen to a recording at HollywoodNews.com or read the transcript at Moviesonline.ca.

Due to filming ‘Midnight in Paris‘ Marion didn’t attend the London Press Conference (although she did make it to the world premiere Thursday evening – more on that later). However, she was present during the Press Conference in Paris on Friday ahead of its premiere there on Saturday. You can watch the entire conference with English/French audio on FilmoSphere France’s YouTube Channel. There’s also another cute video from a different angle of Marion & Leonardo singing each other’s praises, edited by and courtesy of Le Parisien.

Gallery:
015 ‘Inception’ Press Conference – Los Angeles, HQ
009 ‘Inception’ Press Conference – Paris, July 9
251 ‘Inception’ Paris Press Conference – 2010 Screencaps

Video:
001 Other Public Appearances > Inception Paris Press Conference

from Telegraph (UK) / by John Hiscock

Having won an Oscar for her phenomenal portrayal of Edith Piaf in ‘La Vie En Rose’, Marion Cotillard is embarking on an even darker screen journey.

Marion Cotillard is a dreamer. She not only remembers almost every dream she’s had, she says, but can control them, too. “I have busy nights,” she says. “If I wake up during a dream I can usually go back to sleep and finish the story.”

The Oscar-winning French actress is clearly a little uncomfortable talking about her nocturnal habits, but the conversation somehow strayed into such intimate territory while discussing her latest role. The new mega-budget movie from British director Christopher Nolan, Inception is a highly complex science-fiction adventure about dream thieves set within the architecture of the human mind.

Cotillard stars, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, as a mysterious femme fatale. At least, I think that’s her role; she says that when she first read the script by Nolan, who had directed both Memento and The Dark Knight, even she did not fully understand her character or the story.

“I had never read a script like it before,” says Cotillard, her expressive 34-year-old eyes widening. “It is so emotionally complex I had to read it a second time. But I was touched by the different layers of the story and I wanted to be a part of it.”

Over the past few years, as her international career has taken off, Cotillard has studied English with serious devotion and although she still speaks rather slowly, taking her time to select the right word, her language is almost flawless. She now splits her year between Paris, where she lives with her boyfriend, the actor and director Guillaume Canet, and California, where we meet. She is clearly adjusting well to the American lifestyle.

“I’ve spent a lot of time here over the past few years and I’m happy to come back because although Paris is my country and I love being there, this is the first time I’ve been not homesick, but US-sick? Can I say that?”

She had been a star for almost a decade in her native France before her role as Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose earned her an Oscar, making her the first ever winner for a performance in the French language. She credits the late singer herself with helping her to capture her essence and fragility by visiting her in her dreams. “We had some night meetings,” she says, mysteriously.

“The movie and the Oscar changed my life in a very good way. It put me in a different universe,” she says. “When I was in Los Angeles during the campaign process for the Academy Awards, I kept telling myself that it was not real life, it was something else. I was having an amazing time and really enjoying the fantasy of it all and then I thought I should stop saying it wasn’t real because it WAS real.”

The glow of her Oscar win was tainted when an interview she had given a year earlier surfaced in which she suggested that the 9/11 attacks on New York may have been a conspiracy and questioned how two buildings the size of the Twin Towers could collapse. She immediately issued abject apologies and her career did not suffer any permanent American backlash.

By the time international fame arrived, she was well prepared for it, having grown up in an artistic household in Orléans, the daughter of an actor-director father and actress mother. She began her professional acting career at the 16 in the television series Highlander, before making her feature film debut in Luc Besson’s action comedy Taxi. She appeared in several high-profile French films, winning a Cesar award for her role in Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement). In 2003 she made her US film debut in Tim Burton’s Big Fish.

For her first post-Piaf role, Cotillard starred opposite Johnny Depp in Public Enemies as Billie Frechette, living in Louisiana to perfect the character’s accent. She then spent four months learning to dance for her role in the musical Nine. Next up is another action thriller, Contagion, which she will start shooting shortly for Steven Soderbergh in San Francisco.

If she had not been an actress she believes she would have been a musician – she occasionally sings and plays bass and keyboard for a French band called Yodelice. But while she can take her pick of scripts, she claims she has no long-term acting ambitions. “I don’t have a goal,” she says. “I want to live the life I’m living right now. As an actress I just want to tell beautiful stories.”

 Inception (12A) is released on Friday

from South China Morning Post / by Kavita Daswani

Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard stretches herself in a quirky new sci-fi thriller, writes Kavita Daswani

Nobody could accuse Marion Cotillard of seeking out the easy, predictable roles. Since her star-making and Oscar-winning turn as the late, legendary French singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, she has opted for parts that trigger some instinct in her, that plug into her appreciation for diversity: she was the paramour of John Dillinger (played by Johnny Depp) in Public Enemies and the enigmatic, glamorous songstress wife of an adulterous film director in Nine.

“I’m fortunate enough to always have a mix of offers that are totally different from each other and from what I’ve done before,” she says. “My heart helps me decide. It bounces, and then it sends a message to my brain that says, ‘obsession, obsession, obsession, obsession’. I become obsessed with the story, and that’s when I know I have to go there.”

The latest pull came from Inception by Christopher Nolan – he of The Dark Knight fame – and a complex, dense and mind-bending tale about stolen dreams set against a backdrop of international intrigue.

“I wanted to be part of the project right away because it was so original,” Cotillard, 34, says of her first reaction to the script. “You don’t read this kind of a story often. It’s rare to have such an original and unique project.”

Nolan reportedly worked on the script for almost a decade, having to turn his attention away to make the blockbuster Batman movies. He based the story on a few hypothetical questions: what would happen if you could enter someone else’s dreams? If there was a way to access someone’s unconscious mind – say, while they were sleeping – what could that be used for?

Inception is no run-of-the-mill sci-fi film, however. In Nolan’s hands, and with a cast that also includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe and Cillian Murphy, the film is a visual feast, with astonishing special effects and action sequences. True to Nolan’s imprint, the movie also plumbs philosophical depths.

Cotillard plays Mallorie “Mal” Cobb, the wife of Dom Cobb (DiCaprio), an independent undercover operative who knows how to access people’s minds while they sleep, but who has hidden traumas of his own. The movie, shot on a reported budget of US$170 million, was filmed across three continents, starting in Tokyo and taking in Tangiers, Los Angeles, Paris, London and Canada.

“I think Christopher Nolan is one of the most interesting and talented directors of our time,” Cotillard says. “The fact that he writes his own material makes him so connected to his story. It comes out of his mind, brain and imagination. You really do enter his world.”

Cotillard has quintessential movie-star good looks – dark brown hair, today styled in soft ringlets, startling blue eyes, fine features against porcelain skin. She channels an Audrey Hepburn-like elegance, arriving in Beverly Hills one afternoon in a sailor-inspired blackand-white top, harem-style pants and ultra-high heels that, by the end of the afternoon, look like they have caused a fair bit of discomfort.

Although she is something of a newly minted style and celebrity icon in her native France, she is left largely alone by the paparazzi there because of French privacy laws. In the US, however, she is increasingly recognised when out and about, but takes it all in stride.

She is essentially an actor’s actor; her father is an actor, playwright and director, and her mother an actress and drama teacher. She studied drama in Orleans, where she was raised, making her acting debut as a young girl in one of her father’s plays. Her first major role was in Luc Besson’s Taxi in 1998. After that, she got roles in mainstream US studio movies such as the fantasy drama Big Fish, and the romantic comedy Good Year with Russell Crowe.

Even though she began working in the field at a young age, she says she had a “very normal childhood”.

“I think you really have to live the life of a child to be able to bring something that’s connected to people to your work,” she says.
With most of the characters she has played, Cotillard says she has always been able to draw on other people, whether known to her or not.

“When I start working on a character, I enter a process of understanding someone and creating this person. I just open my mind and imagination and everything comes in an organic way. And usually, very quickly, there are some inspirations based on human beings, someone I know, or maybe another actor, artist, politician.”

In the case of Mal, however, she said “nobody came”. “And I thought, maybe my inspiration will start with emptiness, like a blank page. I was really inspired by Chris and Leo. Chris’ personality is very mysterious and filled with this fascinating new world that he offers to people. And Leo’s character was very inspiring because of the relationship he has with Mal.”

The experience, she says, will remain enduringly memorable.

“It was very rich because you enter a world you don’t entirely understand, but that’s the whole point. You have to be lost, and someone will take your hand and take you somewhere unknown, somewhere you will really live and experience. I think, as an actor, that’s what happened to me. When I saw the movie, I had an experience as if I was not part of the project. And that doesn’t happen often.”

There was also a small but highly significant indicator that, perhaps, Cotillard was made for the role. In the film, the operatives are awoken by a song that is a trigger, something that tells them they are back in the real world and not in some dreamscape. And the musical number is no less than Piaf’s La Vie en Rose [edit: it is actually Je ne regrette rien]. Cotillard says Nolan wrote that detail into the film well before she was considered for the role.

“He gave me the script he had written, and the song was already there. It was kind of funny to see that. I thought, ‘Wow’. You know, connections.”

Cotillard was talking about the movie while between projects, but only briefly. Since her stunning 2008 best actress win, she’s been inundated with offers, always going for the material she instantly resonates with. Since finishing Public Enemies, she’s worked on both French and American productions. Before filming Inception, she completed production on a French film, Little White Lies, which opens in France in October and is a drama-comedy about an annual beach gathering for a group of friends that one year goes somewhat awry.

This month, she started filming Midnight in Paris, a romantic comedy written and directed by Woody Allen about a family travelling to the French capital; her co-stars include Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates and, in something of a casting coup, France’s first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Then, in September, she’s off to work on Contagion, a Steven Soderberghhelmed action thriller about a deadly virus.

“I’ve always wanted to be an actress and to work with great directors, and that is what has happened to me,” she says. “I’m on the road most of the time, but I still consider France my home. My base will always be my country, but I love being here, I love being in New York and I loved being in Chicago [where Nine [edit: it was actually Public Enemies] was shot]. I know I could live here.”

At the beginning of June 2010 Marion Cotillard travelled together with Greenpeace to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Congo: Forests on probation is an impressive 7-part video diary of Marion’s stay there and documents the plundering of the Congolese forests. I am leaving on a short holiday so I don’t have the time to upload pictures but I encourage you to watch these videos.

I will catch up on all the ‘Inception‘ promotion and other Marion news once I’m back next week. And here’s a TV alert: She will be the guest on the Late Late Night Show with Craig Ferguson on the day of ‘Inception‘s LA premiere: July 13.