The look is full of disdain. “Cantona was a footballer,” he says, “not an actor.” This tall, thin young man is in charge of the sprawling DVD department at the FNAC store near St Lazare station in the centre of Paris and cannot tolerate the suggestion. “Cantona,” you try to explain, “has been in 11 films, some of them well received.” His disdain deepens. “We don’t have any of them in this store.” He says this standing on a warehouse-sized floor, surrounded by Hollywood trash, Bollywood trash, horror trash, every kind of trash. “Could you check on your computer?” He finds Cantona’s second film, Le Bonheur Est dans le Pré (Happiness Is in the Meadow), momentarily wonders if he should own up, then admits: “Yeah, we do have one.”

At an even bigger store at Les Halles, the assistant is polite. “Nobody in France considers Eric Cantona an actor,” he says. He types “Cantona” into his computer. “See,” he says, “nothing.” The first eight years of Cantona’s life in professional football were spent in France: Auxerre, Martigues, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Nimes. Few considered him a good footballer. Unloved, he left for England.

There, among the Red Devils of Manchester United, he played like an angel, seeming to glide through games, seeing the action as if observing it from on high. He made extraordinary passes, scored wonderful goals, but if there was one thing that distinguished him from the rest, it was the theatricality of his play. He saw himself not as a player but as an actor; technically gifted, assiduously prepared, but still a showman Sometimes, after scoring one of his better goals, he would stand motionless, his chest pushed out, his chin tilted towards the heavens, regally soaking up the acclamation. More than any other Manchester United player, Cantona was the reason the club won its first league title for 26 years in 1992. He played 181 matches and left four years after joining United, but in that short time he became an iconic figure.

Imaginative, creative and intelligent, he was a great footballer. As a man he was passionate, intelligent and volatile. And then there was his Gallic hauteur and strange psychological depth. There was only ever one Eric Cantona.

Nothing became his life at Old Trafford as much as his leaving of it. “See you later,” he said to his team-mates as they got off the coach after a testimonial game at Coventry at the end of the 1997 season. They had just won the Premiership, Cantona’s fourth, and a week or so later the club announced his retirement. By then he was already out of the country on his way to another life. He was 30 and in the full flush of his health.

He doesn’t so much walk as spring into the foyer of the Hôtel Westminster on the Rue de la Paix. It is reassuring to see him on his own: no PR person, no accompanying agent, no need for the crutches of celebrity. It is his physical appearance that knocks you over: he is 40 but looks 35, the smile never leaves his eyes and there’s not a hint that professional sport once owned his body.

Of course, it isn’t just good looks. He dresses with immaculate casualness: the ordinary jacket that sits so right, the jeans, the top, everything cool. Back in the old days at Manchester, Lee Sharpe and Roy Keane would torture the centre half Steve Bruce for the way he dressed. Bruce would point at Cantona’s woolly cardigan and cowboy boots: “What about him?” “Brucey,” they’d say, “he carries it off.”

Cantona has long done that, and not just with his clothes. The clever flicks, the outrageous volleys, even that kung-fu kick at Selhurst Park had a certain style. Today he wants to win me over: it can be seen in the way he smiles, pauses before answering and then looks me in the eye. It is as if he is saying: “I know in your job you are faced with people who speak to you as if you were an object – I see you as a person.”

You know this is another Eric Cantona performance and, as with many others in the past, you are willingly swept along.

His life, he wants you to know, is good. Actually, it is very good. He is filming in Paris this week, Le Deuxième Souffle (The Second Breath), a remake of the 1966 Jean-Pierre Melville movie, and it’s a good part. He talks animatedly about French cinema and how in this movie he is working with the respected French actor Daniel Auteuil.

His enthusiasm and his openness are unexpected, as is the understated charm. Is this smiling and pleasant man the post-football Cantona? “I was like this when I played,” he says, “but I did some things, like when I went after that fan, and that becomes a strong image. People always have it in their minds. That was just one part of me. Most of the time I was very tranquil. My blood has a good circulation, I feel good about my body, about my thinking, I am not stressed, not contracted. I feel like an elastic.”

He wants to explain what retirement from football meant to him, and why he chose cinema: “Retirement is like a death. When you are a footballer, you do something very public, you do it because it is a passion and you feel alive when you’re doing it. You feel alive also because people recognise you for the job you do. Then you quit and it’s like a death. A lot of footballers are afraid and that is why they go on TV to speak about the game. They don’t speak to teach the public or to give a point of view, they do it for themselves. It is important because it helps them to feel alive again, to deal with their fears about this death.

“It was easier for me because I chose to quit when I was still young, and I didn’t quit because I was injured or not able to play at a high level. I also knew why fans were interested in me, I wasn’t naive about that and I prepared for a life where I wouldn’t be recognised. But I have done something public, cinema, so maybe I too was afraid of not being recognised.”