Emmanuelle Béart on love, nudity and being banned from Cannes

Since playing the vengeful and lissome goatherd Manon in

'Ça Commence Par La Fin is not a sexual movie like the French press wanted to pretend,' says Béart scornfully. 'It was so easy to jump on it and say, "You live together, of course you have done a movie with a lot of sex scenes." That's not what it's about. We've never revealed our private life as a couple. This is art. But how could we talk about passion without talking about sexuality, bodies, skins? It would be very dishonest.'

In fact, while a good deal of artfully lit sex goes on, only one scene could truly be considered risqué. In which case, why didn't it get shown? 'We can't all be at Cannes,' she says philosophically. 'Actually there's a very small chance of getting in. That's just the game. Of course it would have been an incredible opportunity to show it, but each film has its destiny.'

Béart seems to have struggled with being directed by her spouse. 'It was strange because he had all the power,' she admits. 'I had to accept that he was the chief. As an actress, my role has always been to get into the life of the director, his taste, his religion – everything that a director represents is what my life represents.' It must have been difficult stepping back from that and returning to a relationship of equals? 'Well, it's never that way, is it?' she says, laughing huskily. 'It's a lot more ambiguous than that. One day it's one of you, the next it's the other.'

Béart is looking fabulous these days, as anybody who sees Ça Commence can attest. She has the physique of a twenty-something and lips that, if possible, seem poutier than before (she denies surgery). No surprise then that the ageism endemic in the film industry doesn't seem to have touched her. On the contrary: 'I am going to die of overwork!' she complains. 'I've done three movies this year, plus a play for five months, and now I am starting another film on Monday. We used to say that it got harder past 40, but today they are writing incredible roles for older women. So I have no frustration about getting old. Anyway, ever since I was 20, I've always thought it would all stop one day, so I'm ready for it.'

Béart was born into a family of glamorous hippies, like slightly lower-octane Gainsbourgs. Her mother, Geneviève Galéa, was a model and muse to the French film director Jean-Luc Godard; her father, Guy Béart, was a folk singer and poet. He left when she was a baby, and her mother married again. Emmanuelle was brought up with her half-siblings, two brothers and a sister, in the South of France. 'We were living with the earth, the sun, the rhythm of nature. I grew up without movies, without theatre, without anything,' she says. 'I was running around half-naked and barefoot all my childhood.' Hence the on-screen nudity? 'It wasn't a problem for me like it is for most people,' she agrees.

It all sounds idyllic but she suggests it wasn't. She was expelled from five schools, and when I ask if her children have had a better childhood than her own, she says very firmly, 'Definitely.' At 14, she left to live with her father, then went to Montreal as an au pair. There, she met the late film director Robert Altman, who advised her to go into acting.

Manon des Sources catapulted her to global fame and she won the 1987 César award for Best Supporting Actress, although she admits that given her barefoot upbringing amid the hills of Provence, the role wasn't much of a stretch. 'I didn't really make a choice about it. I'd always worked since I was 14, doing little jobs, and I just wanted to work and be independent. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't realise the luck I had with Manon, which was such a big hit. And when I did realise, it was more difficult for me because I realised that, in fact, acting was an incredible profession and I really didn't want to stop.'

Since then, she has made a career playing women who are complicated, often to the point of lunacy. Gabrielle in Ça Commence drives her boyfriend to attempt suicide by her erratic behaviour. In La Belle Noiseuse she was a temperamental artist's model; she played an embittered prostitute in Nathalie, and in Vinyan, a mother driven to madness by the death of her son. She and her Vinyan co-star Rufus Sewell have a mutual fan club going: when I met him just after they'd wrapped, he described her as 'a real laugh. She's beautiful, obviously, but thank God she's got a sense of humour.'

'What an actor! I was French, he was English, it could have not worked but it did,' says Béart. 'He is a very lovely human being. I keep him in my heart because what we went through was hard.'

Béart says her new film, Bye Bye Blondie, which she has just started shooting, is 'too complicated to explain', but the book of the same name is about a middle-aged woman who ends up homeless. Doesn't she ever want to play an upbeat role? 'I'm very attracted to complex women,' she says. 'You want to understand that woman and why she behaves in this way. What is the interest in a happy woman for whom everything is fine?' Ironic-ally, she insists that this is just what she is herself. 'I am deeply, totally happy. I force myself to smile every single day when I wake up. The first thing I do before I pick up my mobile is smile.'

When she isn't working, which is not often, admittedly – 'It happened so long ago!' – she says she loves nothing better than being a housewife. 'I am very, how do you say, casanière? I am cleaning because my house is a mess. I love reading, I love staying at home, I love listening to music. And I'm with my children all the time.'