The actress Juliette Binoche was born in Paris in 1964 to a sculptor father and actress mother who divorced when she was four. She is best known in Britain for her film roles in The English Patient, Chocolat and most recently Hidden, Michael Haneke’s cult French thriller. She is mother to two children and is about to start filming The Other Man, a romantic thriller, alongside Liam Neeson

Juliette Binoche has arguably done more for Anglo-French relations than anyone since Brigitte Bardot rolled in the mud wearing nothing much in And God Created Woman.

La Binoche, as she is affectionately known in her home country, has been one of France’s most successful exports, while losing none of her peculiarly French charms. The 43-year-old notoriously turned down the lead role in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park to star in the French arthouse flick Trois Couleurs: Bleu, and her choice of car is equally patriotic.

She could of course have opted for a stylish Citroën C6 or a Peugeot 607, but no, Binoche chooses to be seen behind the wheel of a Renault Kangoo – the one that looks like a workman’s van. To top it all, hers is bright sunflower yellow.

“It is not too sunny in Paris for much of the year,” she explains, “so this brings some light. It also means the car will always be seen – so no one has any excuse to have a crash with me.”

It’s hard to imagine any American film star wanting to be seen behind its wheel but Binoche seems delighted with her boxy runabout. A keen painter in her spare time, she is clearly more seduced by car colours than by prestige badges. Her first car was a tiny Hyundai that was given to her when she was in her twenties and already cutting a dash as one of France’s best-known actresses. “It was a gift,” she says. “It was a wonderful sky blue all over; that colour is very special to me.”

Binoche’s eccentric taste in cars matches her choice of in-car entertainment. Rather than pop or even classical music, the actress prefers to drive around her native Paris to a soundtrack of French philosophy, with everyone from Jean-Paul Sartre to Michel Foucault intoning about the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

Binoche, who speaks almost perfect English, is nearly as famous for turning down roles as starring in them. She refused Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible, and said no to Spielberg’s award-winning Schindler’s List. “That character was raped and killed,” says Binoche defensively. “It wasn’t right for me. It is always a big dilemma when you say no to something which sounds important, because a part of you thinks, ‘Maybe I will never work again.’

“I would love to work with Spielberg – who wouldn’t? But I have to follow my intuition, which has been to express myself on films in the area I am interested in – the human heart.”

Binoche pronounces heart as ’eart, of course, and makes each sentence sound like a seduction.

She finally achieved Hollywood stardom with The English Patient in 1996, which won her an Oscar for best supporting actress. But despite her success she has shielded her private life. It is not the French way to blabber and she’s accomplished at not saying very much. She has a son, Raphael, aged 13 (reportedly by a professional scuba diver), and a seven-year-old daughter, Hannah. Who with? What are her present living arrangements?

“I make it a rule not to talk of such things,” she says. “My private life is different, let’s leave it at that. I try to keep it separate from everything else I do.”

François Mitterrand, the late French president, once famously said he would like to have Binoche as his mistress, but she has confirmed that is an offer she never took up. She is equally laconic about offers from Hollywood producers and agents to move her to a palatial pad in the California sunshine and turn her into a superstar.

“I have been in movies for 22 years and have worked for many different kinds of people,” she says. “I did a Broadway show in New York for a time and I enjoyed it. But if I wanted to move to America I would have done so by now.

“It is too late to become a Hollywood superstar. And, in any case I was never the type,” she says. “When a role is finished, it’s finished. I get no emotion from leaving a character or a film. It is like I have done my duty and have done the best I can. There is no need to have any nostalgia or fear. You learn dying, in a way. We are all going to leave one day, so films are a good way to prepare yourself.”

She makes such dark thoughts sound remarkably cheery and it’s easy to see why she was the one and only choice to play the lead in Chocolat, to deliver such philosophies while mixing cocoa beans and milk alongside a sultry Johnny Depp. “What you do does not matter, but how you do it,” she insists. “If I act or cook or do a painting, or even if I tidy a room, it’s the same thing. It is an attitude towards life, people and objects. It is being. Being present.”

True to form, rather than taking the easy money, she is now in training for her first dance role, as revealed in The Sunday Times earlier this month. Despite having no previous training she will perform a contemporary work, choreographed by Akram Khan, at the National theatre in London next year. “I’m in the mood now to do something I don’t yet know how to do,” she says. “We all have possibilities within us.”

Forget Sartre, Binoche could probably start making her own car tapes.

On her CD changer

In the car I have tapes of French philosophers such asJean-Paul Sartre and writers such as Albert Camus. I like to listen to words as I drive, rather than music, because then I am getting to learn something

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