Post by Emilie-Jolie on Jul 20, 2013 22:02:02 GMT 1
Interview out today
En route to my rendezvous with Vanessa Paradis in a chic Parisian hotel I spy several posters for the latest British film to play in France. I Give It a Year is a romcom about a newly married couple and their seemingly poor prospects for long-term wedded bliss. The film has been retitled Mariage à l’anglaise for the local market. Is this, I ask Paradis, the French idiom for a short marriage?
'No, no,’ she laughs. 'It’s not a common phrase. But you know what? You know how many things are called “French” in the world that are not French? French fries, French kiss – although I’d love to think that that is French,’ she twinkles.
There is no disputing the Frenchness of Vanessa Paradis, for all of her global fame in the realms of pop music, cinema and modelling. She became an international sensation in 1987 when, aged 14, her winsome pop song Joe le taxi was a worldwide hit (it reached number three in the UK).
Within a couple of years she was an award-winning actress too, taking home a César for her debut film role in Noce blanche (White Wedding). At 16 she worked for the first time with the fashion photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino, a creative partnership that she maintains to this day. While still in her teens she began modelling for Chanel, the start of a relationship that has lasted, on and off, for more than 20 years. Her first campaign was the memorable 1991 ad in which she was styled as a precious songbird on a perch to promote Coco perfume.
After teenage stardom her adult life was no gilded cage of effortless celebrity. Paradis continued to shoot films and make albums, undertook international concert tours – and raised a family with Johnny Depp, the actor whom she had met in the bar of the chic Hôtel Costes in Paris in 1998. ('I saw those eyes, and boom! My life as a single man was done,’ Depp later recalled.)
They had two children together – Lily-Rose, now 14, and Jack, 11 – but broke up last summer. Now, aged 40 and having recently completed her first ever English-language film, Fading Gigolo (co-starring Woody Allen and directed by the actor John Turturro), she is returning to her true love. This month she releases her first album of new material in six years. Called Love Songs, it features a whopping 22 tracks.
Why, in these short-attention-span times, a double album?
'Because I was so lucky, I guess, to receive such beautiful songs from different musicians, different artists,’ she says. 'And I started to… what was it?’ She frowns, searching her memory. Locating the answer, she claps her hands. 'Three years ago I did my Best of… album. And I was looking for an original song.’ Her French record label put out a call to writers for new songs suited to Paradis’ breathy, intimate singing voice. The offerings flooded in, so many that Paradis stockpiled them for future use. 'Not just good songs, but grand songs,’ she says, her distinctive gap-toothed smile on full display. 'And once you’re in the studio, you try them all. Most of them inspired us very, very much. So at the end, this double album imposed itself on me.’Paradis likes it when ideas come 'naturellement’, which was the case with the album’s size and its loose concept. 'It’s not a theme, but once I got all the songs, they were all love songs,’ she says. 'So the title of the album wasn’t so difficult.’
So she didn’t give the writers a brief to write her love songs?
'No, no, no, no,’ she says rapidly. 'But that’s what I love to sing the most anyway – love songs. And people love to hear love songs, to find themselves in love songs. It’s reassuring.’ Although, she adds with a laugh, 'sometimes it’s not reassuring at all.’
Most of the songs are in French. But one of the standouts – The Dark, It Comes – was written by Carl Barât, formerly of the British indie band the Libertines. The album’s producer is a friend of Barât, and during recording told Paradis that Barât had a song he wanted to 'propose’ to her.
Being 'such a fan’ of his voice and songs, Paradis thought this was a 'perfect, beautiful’ idea. The song is a duet between warring lovers; he has killed the 'evil harlot’ with whom he has betrayed her. Barât and Paradis, however, have yet to meet; they recorded their vocals separately.
While Barât is based in London, 'I live partly in Paris and partly in Los Angeles,’ Paradis says by way of explaining the scheduling problems. 'But I want to see Carl’s eyes – I want to say thank you. It’s such a powerful song. Even though it’s a sad dispute, it’s a fun song to sing. It was very cinématographique. Do you mind if I smoke?’
Paradis pulls out a packet of Golden Virginia tobacco and some liquorice-flavoured cigarette papers. She may be an international superstar and an exalted fashion muse, but Vanessa Paradis appears very much a roll-her-own kind of woman. She has arrived at the hotel alone, fresh-faced and only fashionably demi-late (30 minutes). She is coolly, calmly stylish: grey boots, tight grey jeans, flowery shirt and a suit-style jacket. Natural and relaxed-looking, if she is wearing make-up, it is so simple as to be invisible.
The official announcement of Paradis and Depp’s split came last June. But rumours concerning the state of their relationship had swirled for some time – fed in part, it must be said, by both parties’ long-term refusal to discuss their relationship publicly. In that spirit of putting two and two together and coming up with five, I suggest to Paradis that some observers will scrutinise the album (which is dedicated to her children) for insights into the break-up. They will dig into the words of the partly English-language title track ('I don’t know nothing about love, you know’), for instance, and assume the record is suffused with post-Johnny ideas or sentiments.
'No,’ she smiles, beatifically. 'And I didn’t even write that lyric, so I am all safe.’ She hesitates and stumbles over her words before declaring, 'I would never do an album as a journal. A journal is yours, but music is something to share with people. Everything that has been said or written in the record are such universal ideas that people can relate to and hopefully make them feel good. And I am completely protected there,’ she smiles again, before adding, 'I didn’t write the songs.’
She concedes that 'because my life is public, people always make – what do you call it? – common points?’ She means 'suppositions’. 'They think, “Oh, she sings that because that…” But it’s not that, it’s something that’s way less… thought of [consciously]. We think about it way more when we do interviews because this is your job, to analyse and to explain. But music has something that is less conscious than we think. It’s something that is like a creature that has a different life. There’s so many interpretations that could be made.’
Paradis is of the view that if something is as pure as music, why do we have to question and analyse how it makes the listener feel good? 'It doesn’t matter. You spoil the pleasure by wondering why. “Oh, this cookie is good. Why is it good?” No, you just eat it, it’s good and that’s it. Just enjoy it and the present moment.’ She smiles and slaps her thighs as if to emphasise her point. 'Music is the passport to…’ Paradis searches for le mot juste. 'Peace.’
Because she has been famous since adolescence, Paradis’ early life has been well documented. The daughter of successful interior designers, she made her first television appearance aged eight on a children’s talent show, L’École des fans, and recorded her first single aged 10. After Joe le taxi, the spotlight followed her everywhere.But once she became a mother, she and Depp worked hard to keep their family life private, maintaining a quiet existence at their homes in the south of France and the Hollywood Hills. Today she is not about to lift the lid on her life post-Depp, but given that she has already said she divides her time between Los Angeles and Paris, I ask if she feels equally at home in both cities.
'No,’ is the immediate reply, 'I feel at home here.’
What does LA feel like?
'LA is… different. It is an amazing place to see for the first time; it’s really a postcard. It does have blue sky all the time – except for the morning, with the pollution – and it does have palm trees, it does have incredible Art Deco buildings and a cinema industry history. I love the schools there too. But my heart belongs here. It’s here that I feel at home. I need seasons. I love it when it rains in LA – it shows that nature takes over.’
Her children are schooled in the US. Do they have American accents? 'No!’ she says, eyes wide, as if to say 'perish the thought’. Lily-Rose has a writing credit on Love Songs. She co-wrote the track New Year, having come up with a melody eight years ago, when she was six. She shares the credits for the song with her mother, father, and with Ruth Ellsworth Carter.
Ellsworth Carter is a remarkable-sounding American – in Paradis’ awestruck words, 'she paints, she sews, she cooks, she writes music, she’s a poet, a real craftswoman.’ Depp first met Ruth and her husband, Bill Carter, when he was shooting What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (with a very young Leonardo DiCaprio) near Austin, Texas, in 1993. Later, Bill joined Depp in his band P and, even later, Ruth made the pirate trousers that Depp’s Jack Sparrow wears in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Bill and Ruth are godparents to Lily-Rose and Jack. 'Ruth’s just an amazing woman to know in your life, whether you’re a man or a woman. She’s got such a freedom of thought and such a generosity, and such a beautiful way of putting everything into a piece of art.’
This, it seems, is how Paradis is approaching the fostering of her children’s artistic minds, by surrounding them with inspirational, creative people. Nothing is forced or presumed. For example, she doesn’t make Lily-Rose or Jack practise musical instruments. 'I don’t think it’s a good thing,’ she says. 'Music is something that really comes from the heart and the guts. It’s got to be something that you want to do. I force them to go to school. I force them to brush their teeth. I can’t force them to make music. But,’ she admits, 'it’s a tricky spot for parents right there. I know.’
Lily-Rose, she says proudly, is a 'non-stop singer. And music will always be in their life, in one way or the other. I’m not worried about that.’ Her daughter is now the age Paradis was when she had her first hit single. Has she worked out her strategy should Lily-Rose suddenly decide she wants to follow in her footsteps? Paradis gives a relaxed shrug. 'You know, she’s got such a busy life being a teenager already. So when the question pops up…’ Another shrug. 'I don’t regret the way it happened for me at all. If I had to do it again I’d do it exactly the same way. But I’m in a different position as a parent. And I’d rather for her to have time to be a kid. I mean, she already has such a spotlight on her just because of her parents.’
And if we consider the glare of the spotlight that the teenage Paradis had to endure – and that was in the pre-internet age, and without having famous parents…
'Yeah, but I had a public proposition,’ she interjects, meaning, I think, that in France she was known as a singer from adolescence. 'She’s just a kid, she’s trying to grow up, live her life. It is,’ she repeats, 'tricky.’Life must be difficult enough given that her parents are in demand all over the world. This summer Depp is combining promotion of The Lone Ranger (another collaboration with the producers and director of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise) with shooting the sci-fi film Transcendence. Paradis plans on touring her album, is still a face of Chanel, and has recently partnered with H&M’s ethical collection Conscious. The Turturro/Allen film, meanwhile, should be released later this year, and will present, it seems fair to say, a new side of Paradis.
'I play a Hasidic widow who’s a lice lady,’ she says. 'My first day of shooting, I’m in front of Woody Allen, dressed in a wig and turban, and this and that, and I’m trying to get rid of the lice of this beautiful little boy with the biggest afro hair, with a thin nit comb. Talk about obstacles!’ She laughs.
As a parent, she knows all about nits. She holds up four fingers. 'Four times – this year!’
And what about her?
'No! Well…’ She gives a confessional grimace. 'Here and there.’ And with her long hair… 'Well, then it’s even more of a nightmare – can you imagine?’ she grins, making scraping noises and running her fingers through her locks. I hope she kept a comb prop from the new movie, I say.
'No,’ she says, smiling, 'but it’s OK, I have many of them.’
'No, no,’ she laughs. 'It’s not a common phrase. But you know what? You know how many things are called “French” in the world that are not French? French fries, French kiss – although I’d love to think that that is French,’ she twinkles.
There is no disputing the Frenchness of Vanessa Paradis, for all of her global fame in the realms of pop music, cinema and modelling. She became an international sensation in 1987 when, aged 14, her winsome pop song Joe le taxi was a worldwide hit (it reached number three in the UK).
Within a couple of years she was an award-winning actress too, taking home a César for her debut film role in Noce blanche (White Wedding). At 16 she worked for the first time with the fashion photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino, a creative partnership that she maintains to this day. While still in her teens she began modelling for Chanel, the start of a relationship that has lasted, on and off, for more than 20 years. Her first campaign was the memorable 1991 ad in which she was styled as a precious songbird on a perch to promote Coco perfume.
After teenage stardom her adult life was no gilded cage of effortless celebrity. Paradis continued to shoot films and make albums, undertook international concert tours – and raised a family with Johnny Depp, the actor whom she had met in the bar of the chic Hôtel Costes in Paris in 1998. ('I saw those eyes, and boom! My life as a single man was done,’ Depp later recalled.)
They had two children together – Lily-Rose, now 14, and Jack, 11 – but broke up last summer. Now, aged 40 and having recently completed her first ever English-language film, Fading Gigolo (co-starring Woody Allen and directed by the actor John Turturro), she is returning to her true love. This month she releases her first album of new material in six years. Called Love Songs, it features a whopping 22 tracks.
Why, in these short-attention-span times, a double album?
'Because I was so lucky, I guess, to receive such beautiful songs from different musicians, different artists,’ she says. 'And I started to… what was it?’ She frowns, searching her memory. Locating the answer, she claps her hands. 'Three years ago I did my Best of… album. And I was looking for an original song.’ Her French record label put out a call to writers for new songs suited to Paradis’ breathy, intimate singing voice. The offerings flooded in, so many that Paradis stockpiled them for future use. 'Not just good songs, but grand songs,’ she says, her distinctive gap-toothed smile on full display. 'And once you’re in the studio, you try them all. Most of them inspired us very, very much. So at the end, this double album imposed itself on me.’Paradis likes it when ideas come 'naturellement’, which was the case with the album’s size and its loose concept. 'It’s not a theme, but once I got all the songs, they were all love songs,’ she says. 'So the title of the album wasn’t so difficult.’
So she didn’t give the writers a brief to write her love songs?
'No, no, no, no,’ she says rapidly. 'But that’s what I love to sing the most anyway – love songs. And people love to hear love songs, to find themselves in love songs. It’s reassuring.’ Although, she adds with a laugh, 'sometimes it’s not reassuring at all.’
Most of the songs are in French. But one of the standouts – The Dark, It Comes – was written by Carl Barât, formerly of the British indie band the Libertines. The album’s producer is a friend of Barât, and during recording told Paradis that Barât had a song he wanted to 'propose’ to her.
Being 'such a fan’ of his voice and songs, Paradis thought this was a 'perfect, beautiful’ idea. The song is a duet between warring lovers; he has killed the 'evil harlot’ with whom he has betrayed her. Barât and Paradis, however, have yet to meet; they recorded their vocals separately.
While Barât is based in London, 'I live partly in Paris and partly in Los Angeles,’ Paradis says by way of explaining the scheduling problems. 'But I want to see Carl’s eyes – I want to say thank you. It’s such a powerful song. Even though it’s a sad dispute, it’s a fun song to sing. It was very cinématographique. Do you mind if I smoke?’
Paradis pulls out a packet of Golden Virginia tobacco and some liquorice-flavoured cigarette papers. She may be an international superstar and an exalted fashion muse, but Vanessa Paradis appears very much a roll-her-own kind of woman. She has arrived at the hotel alone, fresh-faced and only fashionably demi-late (30 minutes). She is coolly, calmly stylish: grey boots, tight grey jeans, flowery shirt and a suit-style jacket. Natural and relaxed-looking, if she is wearing make-up, it is so simple as to be invisible.
The official announcement of Paradis and Depp’s split came last June. But rumours concerning the state of their relationship had swirled for some time – fed in part, it must be said, by both parties’ long-term refusal to discuss their relationship publicly. In that spirit of putting two and two together and coming up with five, I suggest to Paradis that some observers will scrutinise the album (which is dedicated to her children) for insights into the break-up. They will dig into the words of the partly English-language title track ('I don’t know nothing about love, you know’), for instance, and assume the record is suffused with post-Johnny ideas or sentiments.
'No,’ she smiles, beatifically. 'And I didn’t even write that lyric, so I am all safe.’ She hesitates and stumbles over her words before declaring, 'I would never do an album as a journal. A journal is yours, but music is something to share with people. Everything that has been said or written in the record are such universal ideas that people can relate to and hopefully make them feel good. And I am completely protected there,’ she smiles again, before adding, 'I didn’t write the songs.’
She concedes that 'because my life is public, people always make – what do you call it? – common points?’ She means 'suppositions’. 'They think, “Oh, she sings that because that…” But it’s not that, it’s something that’s way less… thought of [consciously]. We think about it way more when we do interviews because this is your job, to analyse and to explain. But music has something that is less conscious than we think. It’s something that is like a creature that has a different life. There’s so many interpretations that could be made.’
Paradis is of the view that if something is as pure as music, why do we have to question and analyse how it makes the listener feel good? 'It doesn’t matter. You spoil the pleasure by wondering why. “Oh, this cookie is good. Why is it good?” No, you just eat it, it’s good and that’s it. Just enjoy it and the present moment.’ She smiles and slaps her thighs as if to emphasise her point. 'Music is the passport to…’ Paradis searches for le mot juste. 'Peace.’
Because she has been famous since adolescence, Paradis’ early life has been well documented. The daughter of successful interior designers, she made her first television appearance aged eight on a children’s talent show, L’École des fans, and recorded her first single aged 10. After Joe le taxi, the spotlight followed her everywhere.But once she became a mother, she and Depp worked hard to keep their family life private, maintaining a quiet existence at their homes in the south of France and the Hollywood Hills. Today she is not about to lift the lid on her life post-Depp, but given that she has already said she divides her time between Los Angeles and Paris, I ask if she feels equally at home in both cities.
'No,’ is the immediate reply, 'I feel at home here.’
What does LA feel like?
'LA is… different. It is an amazing place to see for the first time; it’s really a postcard. It does have blue sky all the time – except for the morning, with the pollution – and it does have palm trees, it does have incredible Art Deco buildings and a cinema industry history. I love the schools there too. But my heart belongs here. It’s here that I feel at home. I need seasons. I love it when it rains in LA – it shows that nature takes over.’
Her children are schooled in the US. Do they have American accents? 'No!’ she says, eyes wide, as if to say 'perish the thought’. Lily-Rose has a writing credit on Love Songs. She co-wrote the track New Year, having come up with a melody eight years ago, when she was six. She shares the credits for the song with her mother, father, and with Ruth Ellsworth Carter.
Ellsworth Carter is a remarkable-sounding American – in Paradis’ awestruck words, 'she paints, she sews, she cooks, she writes music, she’s a poet, a real craftswoman.’ Depp first met Ruth and her husband, Bill Carter, when he was shooting What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (with a very young Leonardo DiCaprio) near Austin, Texas, in 1993. Later, Bill joined Depp in his band P and, even later, Ruth made the pirate trousers that Depp’s Jack Sparrow wears in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Bill and Ruth are godparents to Lily-Rose and Jack. 'Ruth’s just an amazing woman to know in your life, whether you’re a man or a woman. She’s got such a freedom of thought and such a generosity, and such a beautiful way of putting everything into a piece of art.’
This, it seems, is how Paradis is approaching the fostering of her children’s artistic minds, by surrounding them with inspirational, creative people. Nothing is forced or presumed. For example, she doesn’t make Lily-Rose or Jack practise musical instruments. 'I don’t think it’s a good thing,’ she says. 'Music is something that really comes from the heart and the guts. It’s got to be something that you want to do. I force them to go to school. I force them to brush their teeth. I can’t force them to make music. But,’ she admits, 'it’s a tricky spot for parents right there. I know.’
Lily-Rose, she says proudly, is a 'non-stop singer. And music will always be in their life, in one way or the other. I’m not worried about that.’ Her daughter is now the age Paradis was when she had her first hit single. Has she worked out her strategy should Lily-Rose suddenly decide she wants to follow in her footsteps? Paradis gives a relaxed shrug. 'You know, she’s got such a busy life being a teenager already. So when the question pops up…’ Another shrug. 'I don’t regret the way it happened for me at all. If I had to do it again I’d do it exactly the same way. But I’m in a different position as a parent. And I’d rather for her to have time to be a kid. I mean, she already has such a spotlight on her just because of her parents.’
And if we consider the glare of the spotlight that the teenage Paradis had to endure – and that was in the pre-internet age, and without having famous parents…
'Yeah, but I had a public proposition,’ she interjects, meaning, I think, that in France she was known as a singer from adolescence. 'She’s just a kid, she’s trying to grow up, live her life. It is,’ she repeats, 'tricky.’Life must be difficult enough given that her parents are in demand all over the world. This summer Depp is combining promotion of The Lone Ranger (another collaboration with the producers and director of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise) with shooting the sci-fi film Transcendence. Paradis plans on touring her album, is still a face of Chanel, and has recently partnered with H&M’s ethical collection Conscious. The Turturro/Allen film, meanwhile, should be released later this year, and will present, it seems fair to say, a new side of Paradis.
'I play a Hasidic widow who’s a lice lady,’ she says. 'My first day of shooting, I’m in front of Woody Allen, dressed in a wig and turban, and this and that, and I’m trying to get rid of the lice of this beautiful little boy with the biggest afro hair, with a thin nit comb. Talk about obstacles!’ She laughs.
As a parent, she knows all about nits. She holds up four fingers. 'Four times – this year!’
And what about her?
'No! Well…’ She gives a confessional grimace. 'Here and there.’ And with her long hair… 'Well, then it’s even more of a nightmare – can you imagine?’ she grins, making scraping noises and running her fingers through her locks. I hope she kept a comb prop from the new movie, I say.
'No,’ she says, smiling, 'but it’s OK, I have many of them.’
.
