Depp, the rolling stone

This film is a very big canvas showing how people become friends in impossible situations - here a Jewish woman and Gypsy man in 1939 Paris.

Christina Ricci plays Suzie, a girl born in 1920 Russia. Her father flees to America and when he sends for his family she is transported to England, not America, where she is given a new name and identity.

I play Cesar, a traveller, a Gypsy horse-handler who, like Suzie, is an outsider. They meet in Paris where Suzie, now a young woman, is sharing a room with a blonde, ambitious Russian refugee called Lola, played by Cate Blanchett - both are chorus girls. Cesar meets Suzie while working at a chateau, and Lola meets an opera singer called Dante, played by John Turturro. She moves into his wealthy life but as war approaches Dante becomes the voice of fascism. The two women find themselves in different political camps.

This film is a comi-tragedy really, a Romeo and Juliet story between a Gypsy and a Jew. There is no way they can be together at this time when the Nazis were about to overrun Europe. While researching Cesar I read in a book about Hitler's plans to exterminate the Gypsies, who were placed in the same category as black people.

I have a great empathy for Gypsies. All the Gypsy cast were real Gypsies and Sally Potter (who directed and wrote the film) recorded the soundtrack with Taraf de Ha?douks, a group of Romanian Gypsy musicians.