“But I’m not like some celebrities who live with paparazzi 24 hours a day. That’s why I’m keeping my life in France.”  Her home is still in Paris, where she lives with the actor and director Guillaume Canet, whom she met in 2003 when they appeared together in Love Me If You Dare. Since then they have acted together in two other French movies and he has just directed her in the not-yet-released French thriller Blood Ties.  They have an 18-month-old son, Marcel, and live a relatively simple lifestyle, although she is clearly uncomfortable talking about her private life and her relationship with Canet.  “Some people need a partner who is the total opposite of themselves and some people need to find someone who is exactly alike. It’s really hard to explain the combination of two people who love each other. I won’t say anything smart and beautiful about it today because the explanation would be very long.” She laughs. “But I loved working with Guillaume again and I’d love to work with him some more. He’s an amazing director for actors.”  The lissom, long-limbed Cotillard has a reputation for doing meticulous research for everything she undertakes. She has studied English diligently and speaks it almost flawlessly, albeit slowly.  After the festival screenings of Rust and Bone in Cannes and Toronto she was singled out for special praise by critics for her performance as Stéphanie, a whale trainer at a marine park who loses her legs when a show ends in tragedy. Directed by Jacques Audiard, the movie co-stars the Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts as Ali, a nightclub bouncer who becomes her helper and lover.  “I researched and I watched videos of amputees but I didn’t do major deep research because I didn’t really need to know exactly how you move without legs and I thought I would learn with her and experience it with her,” says Cotillard. “If she had been an amputee for 10 years I would have done more, different research.”  For once, she did not object to love scenes, which for her are usually the worst part of being an actress. “I am shaking; I feel very bad and I want to cry most of the time because I hate it so much,” she says. “But here it was totally different. I was so involved with my character that I was happy she would enjoy something like that. It’s a movie about love, about flesh, about rust and bone and heart and sex, so without the sex scenes the movie would have missed something.”  It is not surprising that there is an air of theatricality about Marion Cotillard. She grew up in an artistic household, the daughter of an actor-director father and actress mother. As a child she appeared on stage in plays written by her father and began her professional acting career at the age of 16 in the TV series Highlander, then made her feature film debut in Luc Besson’s action-comedy Taxi. She appeared in several high-profile French films, winning a César award – the French equivalent of an Oscar – for her role in Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement) and in Ridley Scott’s A Good Year, with Russell Crowe.  For her first post-Piaf role she co-starred with Johnny Depp as John Dillinger’s love interest, Billie Frechette, in Public Enemies, living in Louisiana to perfect the character’s accent. She then spent four months learning to dance for her role as Luisa, the cuckolded Italian film director’s wife in the musical Nine. In quick succession after that came Inception, Midnight in Paris, Contagion and The Dark Knight Rises.  Until recently, Cotillard occasionally sang and played bass and keyboard with the French band Yodelice, with whom she recorded several songs. “It was two years ago, when I could still go on stage, and I would love to do it again because my place in that band is very special. They gave me a lot of freedom to come and go and I want to give some time to music. That’s what I’m going to do.”  Finding time is becoming more difficult for the actress now that she has a toddler. “It changes things because I have to organise myself differently,” she says with a laugh. “Usually when I work I’m totally dedicated to the role and when I leave the set I bring some of my character home with me, but I can’t bring anyone home with me now because my son would freak out.  “So I’m trying to totally separate my life as a woman from my life as an actress. And so far it hasn’t been that difficult.”  Rust and Bone opens on Nov 2
French actress Marion Cotillard tells John Hiscock about her   triumph as Edith Piaf, avoiding the paparazzi, and the importance of sex   scenes in her latest film Rust and Bone.