Post by BeautifulMidnight on Oct 29, 2005 15:42:42 GMT -5
Her blondish hair has been cropped short, she wears no make-up and her loosely flowing dress cannot hide le bump. Vanessa Paradis has been propelled back into the celebrity front line.
Not that she was ever very far away from the action.
Partly, she only has herself to blame for the most recent bout of activity. Any relationship with bad boy Johnny Depp was bound to give cause for insatiable curiosity. Now that they live together with a baby, rumoured to be a boy, due next month, they are considered fair game.
It's all too tempting for the Gallic media. At 26 she still has the aura of the teenager promoted and helped by the late Serge Gainsbourg among others. Her voice retains a bit of its little girl appeal first heard in her candid rendition of the Gainsbourg-produced Joe le Taxi at the age of 14 which became a massive hit in the UK and across Europe.
Depp, at 35, always was a rebel waiting to be tamed as well as being a self -confessed francophile. At the recent French Oscars, the Cesars, he was given an honourary award by actor Pascal Greggory who divulged their secret thereby making them national property.
They've been together for more than a year since he left Kate Moss. In February Depp, fulfilling his duties as expectant father, made a tour of the Cote d'Azur to seek out a property, helped by Paradis's father, an interior design consultant, who knows the area well.
Four million francs later, their love nest as the scandal sheets insist on styling it, at Saint Aygulf, near Saint Tropez, with stunning views over the sea, awaits the new arrival. The paparazzi have been falling out of the trees. The couple chose the location because it's where they first spent romantic interludes together before the rest of the world cottoned on to their liaison. Depp and Paradis, who met at a dinner in Paris given by mutual friends, have been to-ing and fro-ing to London by private jet where he is finishing his new film Sleepy Hollow. And his current presence has become even more high profile on the continent as he smoulders out of billboards for the fashion chain H&M promoting trendy knits for a knockdown 170 francs (or roughly GBP 17).
She has been equally prominent in magazines and on chat shows this week - her task being specifically to promote her new film La Fille sur le Pont (The Girl on the Bridge), directed by Patrice Leconte of The Hairdresser's Husband fame, who last year also cast her with those two veteran Gallic icons Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon in the caper comedy Une Chance sur Deux (Half a Chance). It bombed at the box office and with the critics. Paradis had already committed to the new film before shooting on the other title had begun and early indications suggest she need have no qualms.
She appears determined to keep the bounds of discussion tightly reined. Yes, she's a celeb, but no, she won't share her private life with anyone. "There are people who do this job just to be rich and famous. I'm not one of them. You're very exposed as an actor and the prospect of celebrity makes me frightened. Yes, the money is useful and has advantages but even so it scares me. There's no reason I should share my private life with the whole world. I don't answer personal questions - I'll do interviews to promote a film, that's all. The rest, though, belongs to me. So let's move on." Hint taken, and in the circumstances it would be impolite to demur. Paradis whose past loves have included rocker Lenny Kravitz and French singer Florent Pagny, almost double her age, is quite capable of handling any situation after her 12 years in the business.
"I've learned a lot," she says with the famous reflective pout. "In the beginning it all happened too quickly.
People despised me when Joe le Taxi sold two million copies and reached number two in your country. But for the last few years I've been in charge of the rhythm, instead of feeling I have to rush off and try everything."
It was a bit of a struggle in the early days. Her entry into the business was through her uncle Didier Pain (an actor and later her manager) who introduced her to Gainsbourg, an old hand at turning pubescent French girls into hot properties - Isabelle Adjani, Jane Birkin, France Gall and Bardot. After Joe Le Taxi, Paradis found graffiti on walls near her home which read: Vanessa Paradis is a bip.
"Girls treated me as a bip and pulled my hair. They thought everything that happened to me was too good to be true. When I met people on the street I got the impression they almost wanted to excuse themselves. Just before I went off to the States one woman came up to me and spat in my face," says Paradis with a "what do I care?" shrug. Why should she give a bip if that's the price she has to pay for her now enviable existence? In any case, girls never liked her - at school all her friends were male.
Her mother Corinne acted as her chaperone and confidante and demanded some of the nude scenes be excised from Noce Blanche (White Wedding), her first film. Enough remained to create more than just a frisson among the populace of both sexes. Her mother moved her to an exclusive Paris school in the hope she would be able to make new friends but the girls there were the worst. "They wouldn't even talk to me or even to look at me," recalls Paradis. Mind you, her performance of Joe le Taxi, with microphone held phallic like in her mitts, was not the sort of behaviour well-bred mademoiselles were supposed to acknowledge.
Not that she was ever very far away from the action.
Partly, she only has herself to blame for the most recent bout of activity. Any relationship with bad boy Johnny Depp was bound to give cause for insatiable curiosity. Now that they live together with a baby, rumoured to be a boy, due next month, they are considered fair game.
It's all too tempting for the Gallic media. At 26 she still has the aura of the teenager promoted and helped by the late Serge Gainsbourg among others. Her voice retains a bit of its little girl appeal first heard in her candid rendition of the Gainsbourg-produced Joe le Taxi at the age of 14 which became a massive hit in the UK and across Europe.
Depp, at 35, always was a rebel waiting to be tamed as well as being a self -confessed francophile. At the recent French Oscars, the Cesars, he was given an honourary award by actor Pascal Greggory who divulged their secret thereby making them national property.
They've been together for more than a year since he left Kate Moss. In February Depp, fulfilling his duties as expectant father, made a tour of the Cote d'Azur to seek out a property, helped by Paradis's father, an interior design consultant, who knows the area well.
Four million francs later, their love nest as the scandal sheets insist on styling it, at Saint Aygulf, near Saint Tropez, with stunning views over the sea, awaits the new arrival. The paparazzi have been falling out of the trees. The couple chose the location because it's where they first spent romantic interludes together before the rest of the world cottoned on to their liaison. Depp and Paradis, who met at a dinner in Paris given by mutual friends, have been to-ing and fro-ing to London by private jet where he is finishing his new film Sleepy Hollow. And his current presence has become even more high profile on the continent as he smoulders out of billboards for the fashion chain H&M promoting trendy knits for a knockdown 170 francs (or roughly GBP 17).
She has been equally prominent in magazines and on chat shows this week - her task being specifically to promote her new film La Fille sur le Pont (The Girl on the Bridge), directed by Patrice Leconte of The Hairdresser's Husband fame, who last year also cast her with those two veteran Gallic icons Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon in the caper comedy Une Chance sur Deux (Half a Chance). It bombed at the box office and with the critics. Paradis had already committed to the new film before shooting on the other title had begun and early indications suggest she need have no qualms.
She appears determined to keep the bounds of discussion tightly reined. Yes, she's a celeb, but no, she won't share her private life with anyone. "There are people who do this job just to be rich and famous. I'm not one of them. You're very exposed as an actor and the prospect of celebrity makes me frightened. Yes, the money is useful and has advantages but even so it scares me. There's no reason I should share my private life with the whole world. I don't answer personal questions - I'll do interviews to promote a film, that's all. The rest, though, belongs to me. So let's move on." Hint taken, and in the circumstances it would be impolite to demur. Paradis whose past loves have included rocker Lenny Kravitz and French singer Florent Pagny, almost double her age, is quite capable of handling any situation after her 12 years in the business.
"I've learned a lot," she says with the famous reflective pout. "In the beginning it all happened too quickly.
People despised me when Joe le Taxi sold two million copies and reached number two in your country. But for the last few years I've been in charge of the rhythm, instead of feeling I have to rush off and try everything."
It was a bit of a struggle in the early days. Her entry into the business was through her uncle Didier Pain (an actor and later her manager) who introduced her to Gainsbourg, an old hand at turning pubescent French girls into hot properties - Isabelle Adjani, Jane Birkin, France Gall and Bardot. After Joe Le Taxi, Paradis found graffiti on walls near her home which read: Vanessa Paradis is a bip.
"Girls treated me as a bip and pulled my hair. They thought everything that happened to me was too good to be true. When I met people on the street I got the impression they almost wanted to excuse themselves. Just before I went off to the States one woman came up to me and spat in my face," says Paradis with a "what do I care?" shrug. Why should she give a bip if that's the price she has to pay for her now enviable existence? In any case, girls never liked her - at school all her friends were male.
Her mother Corinne acted as her chaperone and confidante and demanded some of the nude scenes be excised from Noce Blanche (White Wedding), her first film. Enough remained to create more than just a frisson among the populace of both sexes. Her mother moved her to an exclusive Paris school in the hope she would be able to make new friends but the girls there were the worst. "They wouldn't even talk to me or even to look at me," recalls Paradis. Mind you, her performance of Joe le Taxi, with microphone held phallic like in her mitts, was not the sort of behaviour well-bred mademoiselles were supposed to acknowledge.
