Diane Kruger: screen siren

Diane Kruger wants coffee and a croissant. No water, no açai berries, no seeds, just black coffee and a croissant, which she tears apart with hands and teeth. She has just slipped into a rooftop suite in New York's Hudson hotel to meet me, without entourage or fuss. She is wearing a black and grey cashmere jumper, leggings, flats, an expensive-looking bashed-up leather jacket, and her hair is shoved up into a little sumo wrestler bun. She folds herself up in the straightbacked chair, feet under bottom, hands full of pastry, nibbling like a squirrel. She is no head-turner. It's a slow burn. Gradually her fine-featured blondeness morphs from merely pretty into something more unexpected, something cold and perfect that stays with you after she leaves.

At 32, she is still lugging the mantle of 'most beautiful woman in history' around with her, a label that came with her highprofile and slightly controversial casting as Helen in 2004's Troy, both a blockbuster and a turkey that starred Brad Pitt as Achilles and Orlando Bloom as Paris. By that point she had already been nominated for a César Award (the French Oscar) for her performance in 2002's Mon Idole, but the word was put about that she had beaten the likes of Julia Roberts to the role of Helen and the situation was hyped to make her look like a totally unknown, left-field choice. 'That was always going to be a part where half the world would agree with the choice of casting,' she says, 'while the other half were like, ''What? A white girl? With blue eyes and blonde hair? For Helen of Troy? Where's the hot Latin girl?"'

She is a little weary of the Troy thing. It was seven years ago, it was not a good film and she has turned down all the untouchable beauty roles since to chuck herself into building a credible career. 'It's just that Troy was so long ago and it didn't turn out as great as we had all hoped and everything has been said about it, but it gave me exposure and put me on the map.' She is quite German and practical. She works hard, she sees results or she moves on to the next thing. Her hard work is perhaps about to pay off in a significant way that should take her from red-carpet favourite (she is a good dresser, regularly choosing designs by Chanel, Balenciaga, Louis Vuitton and Marchesa) to Hollywood contender. Later this year she will again co-star with Brad Pitt in the much anticipated Inglourious Basterds, the latest offering from Quentin Tarantino. And if Tarantino can turn Uma Thurman into a cult, pin-up action heroine, then doing something similar for Diane is only to be expected.

Inglourious Basterds is a Second World War movie that sees Diane cast as Bridget von Hammersmark, a German film star who spies for the British. Diane is classically trained but found working for Tarantino to be a whole new education. 'He is somebody who really loves cinema,' she says. 'He has seen every B-movie, every C-movie you could possibly imagine. His brain is a library of movies and that's very nice because his references are so broad. Then, as a director, he is incredibly demanding. I worked my butt off on that movie. He's very attached to his words because he wrote the script, so he will sometimes break a scene if you forget to say an "and" or a "but". It was exhausting, but work will never be the same again for me. I have never felt so elevated. He definitely gives you wings. In Hollywood, women on set are often the beautiful jewel who the director is in love with, but he couldn't care less about that. My character was a typical Quentin creation; impossibly glamorous but tough, smart and strong. It was such a pleasure and a gift. I feel like he was my mentor.'

And Diane likes to learn. For a start, it is astounding to think that she lived in the one-horse town of Algermissen, not far from Hanover, until she was 15. She then moved to Paris - where she still has a flat, near her friend Karl Lagerfeld in St Germain - until a couple of years ago when she decided to base herself primarily in New York. One, not unreasonably, anticipates a German accent or some kind of mid-European burr, but her voice is pure American. Even her sentence structure is perfect. It is a little unnerving. She must possess an incredibly well-tuned ear.

She feels little attachment to her hometown. Her childhood in Algermissen - a town of white picket fences and curtaintwitching - was less than idyllic, and she loathed everybody knowing her family's business. Her mother, Maria-Theresa, has worked in a bank for many years and her father, Hans, was in IT. He was also an alcoholic. From the age of two, Diane's nanny, focus and solace was ballet. She was going to be a dancer, which was to be her way out of the provinces.

But at 13 she sustained a knee injury and had an operation that meant six months without ballet. Six months turned into forever. 'Ballet was so easy at the beginning,' she says. 'When you are young, you can do anything with your body, but I was growing up and I had to train so much harder to be flexible. I had to make the decision. Was I good enough to be what I wanted to be, which was the prima ballerina? I didn't have the passion and I don't think I had the talent.'

At around this time her parents split up. It has been reported that Hans left Maria-Theresa as a result of her infidelity, but Diane brushes this theory away with a sweep of her hand. 'Not true. It was bad for a long time,' she says. 'My dad was an alcoholic and we left him. It was a bad situation at home and my mum, my brother and I left overnight. We left everything.' She has not seen or spoken to her father since, despite his claims that he is dying and his occasional newspaper appearances dolefully clutching a picture of Diane as a child.

That night-time flit took Diane, her younger brother Stefan and her mother to a tiny, one-bedroom flat in the same town. Stefan coped rather worse than Diane with his parents' rows, his father's drinking and subsequent moves. 'He was a little more troubled by the whole thing,' she says. 'Ballet helped me through many things in life, gave me discipline and hope - something beautiful. He really didn't have that and he needed a dad, so it was hard for him. He went a little crazy as a teenager, dropped out of school, had a couple of wild years and then he really came around and I'm very proud of him. He finished school, he studied to become a computer programmer and right now he works in construction.'

(Above) Diane wears dress, £3,850, Blumarine (020 7823 1555). Shoes, £1,345, Yves Saint Laurent (020 7493 1800). Ring, price on application, Bulgari (020 7872 9969)

Diane was 15 when a boyfriend sent her picture to a magazine that was running an Elite modelling competition. 'Maybe he regretted it later,' she shrugs, 'because I won and then I left.' The prize was a modelling contract and flights to Paris. She begged, nagged and pleaded with her mother to let her go. 'Given the last two years and how we'd been living, I think she felt that she needed to give me the opportunity,' she says. 'And I am very grateful to her. That's the best thing you can do for your child: trust her.'

But Maria-Theresa was very clear that if there was the slightest whiff of trouble, Diane would be on the first plane back to Germany. As if Diane was going to allow that to happen. 'I had no family that could support me so if I didn't make money then I was going home,' she says. 'I couldn't afford to show up late, and the odds were against me because I'm not very tall: 5ft 7in is very short for a model, particularly in France. It took about two months of hearing, "You're too small, you're too this, you're too that," and then I got a huge job. My first job was for Lou Lou perfume by Cacharel, wearing a dark wig. Then I did everything. Vogue covers, Elle covers, four different perfume ads, Chanel make-up. I worked a lot.'

She modelled for five years but tired of it far sooner. 'I got really bored,' she says. 'I admire girls like Kate Moss who have been doing it for 20 years. I was like, "Stop touching me."' She is a feminine, smiley, calm little thing and every now and then she gives a hint of backbone, and German backbone at that.

She had saved enough money to go to drama school and chose the high-minded Parisian conservatoire Cours Florent, which counts Audrey Tatou, Isabelle Adjani and Eva Green among its alumnae. 'I had never been to college so that was my time,' she says. 'I had been on my own since I was 15 so it was such fun to smoke cigarettes after class and talk about why Molière is better than Victor Hugo. It was carefree and I loved it.'

Before she had completed the course she was plucked from class to star opposite Josh Hartnett in the 2004 romantic thriller Wicker Park, playing the object of Hartnett's obsessive love. She soon returned to France, where the boyfriend she had met in a bar, French actor Guillaume Canet, cast her in his directorial debut, Mon Idole. 'He was very tough on me, too,' she says, 'but thank God, because I was nominated for a César, so I guess it paid off. We did another film together years later, Merry Christmas, and then it was just easy.'

By the time Mon Idole came out she and Guillaume had married, and by the time Merry Christmas came out they were on the rocks, finally splitting up, amicably, in 2006. He is now dating Marion Cotillard (the French actress who won an Oscar in 2007 for her portrayal of Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose) and she has been with Joshua Jackson, the ex-Dawson's Creek heartthrob (as a teenager he dated his then co-star Katie Holmes) and now Fringe star, for three years.

They have lived together in Tribeca for the past year but the set of Fringe (an FBI drama for Fox) is moving to Vancouver, so the couple have decided to buy a house in LA and will commute. 'I have no attachment to places,' she says. 'I have learned that home is where the heart is and I just want to be with Josh.' They met years ago and he chased her and chased her. They have comparably upsetting backgrounds: he grew up in suburban Canada, his parents split up and, in the divorce, his father fought for custody of Josh's dog, won it and promptly gave the animal away to a kennel.

Diane, for all her restlessness (she can also pass for French without a hitch), seems to have found a home with Josh. 'There are so many beautiful things in life and since I met Josh - he is incredibly normal and loves life - it is the first time that I have preferred my life to my work. I am happiest just hanging with him and I feel like anything is possible because he's there. That gives you great calm. I know if everything fails I still have him, so it's all OK.'

(Above right) Diane wears top, £3,310, Louis Vuitton (020 7399 4050)

She says that she is through with marriage but is starting to consider the possibility that she might have a child one day. 'I think I want kids,' she says slowly. 'I didn't think I would but now that I've met Josh I know that I'll have at least one. He has great values and that's important to me.' Their friends tend to be non-actors and they like to go backpacking. 'We did Australia last year when we had a convertible and slept in the car. It was the best holiday ever,' she beams. 'And we went on a camping trip, but that wasn't quite as romantic as I thought it would be - I went on the back of his motorcycle and that means you don't talk to each other all day because you are on the back of the friggin' bike. We drove through the desert wearing helmets and I thought I was going to die of heatstroke.'

Life is treating her well but I sense that she is waiting for the next level of work in America. Her latest release is another French film directed by Fred Cavayé, called Anything for Her, in which she plays a make-up-free, harrowed wife locked up for a murder she did not commit while her husband does anything it takes to free her. The film has been so well received that Paul Haggis, the writer and director of Oscar-winning Crash, has bought it for an English-speaking remake. 'It was a very important part for me because it was a very mature part. It was nominated for Best Movie at the Césars and I never would have got the part if it was made in America. It would have gone to Kate Winslet or Cate Blanchett.'

Anything for Her is very good but surely it will be Inglourious Basterds that is her ticket to the big time. Not that she doesn't have her place in the gallery of fame already. The Troy hype stuck, partly because she has worked to prove herself and partly because of her physical presence. At any significant red-carpet extravaganza, Diane will be among the best dressed. She has maintained her relationship with designers from her modelling days. 'I don't like to be too safe with fashion,' she says. 'I actually dislike that classic, standard Hollywood look. If I see another strapless gown... I'm not saying that they are not nice or not pretty but everybody looks the same - too much hair, too much make-up.'

Diane Kruger has immense poise and patience - oldfashioned, enduring qualities. Tarantino has recognised something cult and iconic in this little blonde. Something glacial but wry. A survivor, a reinventor, a grafter, a student. A star.

Anything for Her is in cinemas from 5 June 2009

Hair by Keith Carpenter at the Wall Group. Make-up by Jeanine Lobell at themagnetagency.com. Fashion assistant: Orsolya Szabo.

Shot on location at the Hudson New York, 356 West 58th Street, New York (00800 4969 1780; hudsonhotel.com)

The ES team flew with Virgin Atlantic (five flights daily from London Heathrow to New York, return fare from £284 including taxes: 08448 747747; virginatlantic.com)

Diane Kruger: screen siren

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