Playing with Emotion
by Joan Dupont

Deep-socketed sapphire eyes, bushy lashes, muscled arms: Anne Parillaud's androgynous charms and Terminator way with a gun made her a compelling terrorist in Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita. It was Besson, she says, who "brought out that strength, the rage inside me. On the surface I look fragile and insecure; you have to know me very well."

There must be something about this actress that gets her cast as a killer, a mutant, a vampire. In John Landis's Innocent Blood, which opens this fall [1992], she is a vampire in love, trapped by her inhuman condition, looking as if every bite hurts her, and in Vincent Ward's Map of the Human Heart, due out early next year, she plays a half-Indian girl yanked between two worlds, ferocious and pathetic. Even when Parillaud is at her most earthy -- the quality that attracted Ward -- she has a certain surreal presence, or absence. Her betwixt and between, gamine or garçonne quality may come from living in that amazing, long-limbed body: she says she is at odds with it and can't stand herself onscreen. Perhaps, like a true vampire, she can't see her own reflection?

Raised in the idealistic '60s, Parillaud was set to become a lawyer when she got a summer-vacation acting job in Michel Lang's L'hôtel de la plage, a teenybopper comedy. Then came Girls, by Just Jaeckin (of Emmanuelle fame), which she says wasn't even erotic, and a couple of films that were. She played beside Alain Delon in a couple of B thrillers, and everybody said she was his creation. She had stopped acting and was awaiting transmutation when she met Besson, who wrote a script for her: "There's before and after Nikita," she says.

Parillaud talks in husky, intense tones, toying with a slender turquoise bracelet, a handmade gift from her and Besson's five-year-old daughter. At the end of our talk, at Paris's Café de Flore, she looks down at it, chagrinned: "I've broken the elastic -- I have to fix it," she exclaims.

Weren't you afraid of being typecast after Nikita?

That's why I didn't work right away -- people don't have much imagination. Map of the Human Heart was the first film I chose; it gave me a chance to play a part with depth. I have trouble playing lightweights. My character, Albertine, has depth because of her dilemma: she wants to pass for white. But when she was young she was in love with a boy who was part Eskimo, and her heart belongs to him. She suffered as a child and doesn't want her children to suffer. She's strong -- a rebel, a fighter -- but sensitive, so I could work on a gamut of emotions and talk about a crucial problem: racism, cultural differences. It's incredible that we still have these problems -- that we can't respect people from other cultures.

What did you know of Indian life? How did you prepare?

I lived on Indian reservations in Canada for three weeks, in a family with lots of children. It was great living wild in the woods, a natural and spiritual existence. The other part, the Americanization of the Indians, is less fun. It was a trip that made me happy and sad. That's what I love about this work: I love adventure and discovery, I love humanity -- there's only one kind -- all of it involved with death, love, life, those vital lifelines.

What did people on the reservations think of you as an Indian?

It was amazing because I met all sorts -- blondes with green eyes! Since I was white and Parisian, I was afraid I wouldn't be believable; in the film, I wear dark contacts and have long black hair and dark skin, like the Indians.

Your director, Vincent Ward, said that he loved your spontaneity -- that you were as unpredictable as the character. Do you agree?

I try to live the moment and not obey laws, rules, conventions, or norms; to react to a sensation, a feeling, or an emotion. You can't program emotion. I don't want to program my characters or choice of films. I want love to rule -- love of a character, a film, work with a director -- and love is unpredictable: you never know when you're going to fall in love. I have no game plan. Even if it's hard to live that way, it makes me feel alive; I listen to what goes on inside.

You seem to think things over.

Yes, a lot. But I know that thought and reflection are poison for an actress. I don't like the word, "act". When I read a script I make a gut decision, and my character also has to live it in her gut so that the audience can get it straight. A lot of people are afraid to let the lid off their emotions; I'm the opposite.

Have you always been that way?

Since when I was young, though I stopped when I started acting. I was just a beginner, and I listened to others. I had never even thought I'd be an actress -- I was supposed to be a lawyer. But the motivation is the same: when you act, you defend a role; you have to be convincing. It's the same career.

You look athletic. Do you take dance?

Classic and modern. I love to move. Body language is essential for an actress, even if you don't use your body in an athletic way. Just to be free, to use it like your voice. A body can be small and have incredible violence. A body talks.

But you've said you have conflicts with your body.

I'm contradictory, and very prudish. I don't mind showing the strength inside, but I don't like the flesh. If I have a nude scene, it has to have a point; otherwise, I feel like a piece of meat.

Were you ever anorexic?

Yes, I was anorexic, bulimic, everything. [laughs] I can eat the same thing every day; I have no taste. Now I'm bulimic: any moment now, I'm going to ask for fruitcake -- that's what I come here for -- and I'll order several at once.

What's your sign, your birthday?

Taurus, but I don't want to give my birthdate, because an actor shouldn't be too personalized: his job is to make people believe what's on-screen. Actors should be timeless and impersonal.

What do you think of your choices as an actress?

Before Nikita, they were all calculated, and I was wrong every time.

Was it amusing to play a vampire in Innocent Blood?

Interesting, not amusing. I loved it, but I don't know how it will come out. But I love the vampire as a parable: there's nothing more like a vampire than a human being -- we're bloodsuckers. I had never read anything on vampires or seen vampire movies, so I told John Landis I wanted to keep that virginity. I wanted to make my character wild and animal, like a cat. And there's a love parable, too: most people don't know how to love; to me, it means complete acceptance of the other person. Of course, my character can't change the way she is, her nature, and that's the way it should be.

When you say that people don't know how to love, do you know how to love?

No. But I'm lucid, and insecure. Knowing what I know of love, I hang back because I don't like to lie to myself. So I don't leave the door open to people who lie to me.

You're not romantic?

Maybe I'm too romantic. We have an emptiness inside and replace it with anything -- drugs, money, art. We all go after love, since it's the easiest thing to fill this emptiness. Romanticism, magic are something else.

Can you have balance without love? Passion?

We need that élan or adrenaline: you can call it emotion, sensation, passion, but I wouldn't call it love. Love is that unconditional thing.

Has it happened to you often?

No, it's very complicated for me. T o love is the hardest thing for me, but not just for me.

Has your daughter changed your life a lot?

Everything. There's before and after. It's terrifying, that unconditional love you have for a child. I still wonder if she really came from me, from my womb. It's a miracle. I don't understand it. I live it very intensely.