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Preparing for a phone call with Marion Cotillard is a multimedia experience. Hours not spent indulging La Vie en Rose daydreams and compulsively rewatching the Macbeth trailer in which Cotillard plays the Lady (to Michael Fassbender’s Macbeth) will be devoted to sifting through Google image search results for the inelegant but apt prompt “Marion Cotillard Style.” From the infinite issuing scroll comes back-baring red carpet gowns, gingham promo-party frocks, the occasional cocktail-hour Bermuda short, and every so often a candid snippet of wrapped-up airport-wear (usually set off by a cherubic toddler in tow)—a wardrobe suggesting a rare combination of ladylike daring. By which I mean to imply that one does not just prepare, one steels oneself. This is, after all, the woman whom wunderkind director Xavier Dolan just described as “a princess of milk and silk with eyes chiseled of emeralds and diamonds” in December’s issue of Vanity Fair. One might expect the actress and face of the Lady Dior campaign to chatter on endlessly about all things fashion-related; one might brace for a practiced speech littered with designer names, appropriated art world jargon, and pinpointed sartorial influence ranging from the standard cinematic icons to just-this-side-of-improbable high-society fixtures. But, although Google returns “about 1,090,000 results in 0.54 seconds” on the question of “Marion Cotillard Style,” ask the woman herself and there’s decidedly less bandwidth devoted to the subject.
“Actually, I don’t know if I even have a style,” says Cotillard. She’s speaking to Vogue from Los Angeles over a spotty connection upon the eve of Macbeth’s stateside premiere, and the statement rings more of confession than dismissal. “Honestly,” she counters my guffaw of disbelief, “I never analyzed whether I had a style or whether I didn’t. I wouldn’t be able to describe my style, or even tell if I have one or not.” Which is, of course, the most impossibly French statement on style ever to have been uttered, and which arrives around minute seven in our 23-minute conversation. I throw the rest of my notes away.
I wonder if I can try to get at this another way. In a classic interviewing trick, an inquiry is made as to the last piece of clothing Cotillard purchased for herself—perhaps its description might provide a few features of sartorial flair that can be writ large later. “An Alexander McQueen cape,” Cotillard responds. “I wear it every day.” Now we’re getting somewhere. I ask her to describe it. “It’s modern and old at the same time; it’s feminine and masculine at the same time. The fabric is very rich, but at the same time very subtle, and it creates this little ball around you. It’s everything I love.” A certain woman’s style writ large, indeed.
In a world that reveres French girl style to the point of fangirl-dom, the United States usually takes the cake. Half of the sum total of fashion sites and style blogs are French girl fan fiction by another name. Without a steady stream of Coco Chanel, Caroline de Maigret, Françoise Hardy, and Lou Doillon, an entire industry would collapse. And it’s not without cause. In the best of French girl style, there’s a persistent undoing of clothes, issuing from a sort of devil-may-care sensibility of the girl (enough to make you think that whoever that devil is, he must care, and very deeply—that he’s sorry and could maybe he have another chance?). And Cotillard is irreplaceable in the pantheon, the more structured counterpoint to the slouchy, unkempt boyfriend-shirt-and-bedhead variety. She always appears coiffed, smoothed, expressive yet restrained, often in something skirted and tightly nipped at the waist. A sense of lightness and play threads its way through. And we poor devils care so much. I ask her what it’s like to be French in a world where everyone loves a French girl.
“Well,” she says, pausing a moment, “some of that sounds positive. But I guess we should all just be who we are, what we are, and not try to look like anyone else but ourselves. But there’s something about the French woman,” she admits, “a sense of freedom that must read and show in the way we dress.” Is that the thing? “Yeah, I guess—freedom.”
The true enemy of the French girl aesthetic, of course, is effort. And this is true for movie stars as any of us. On the subject of fly-by-night trends, she admits the same defeat us Normals have known in the form of frosted tips and tube tops. “I remember when I was younger I would try [trends] and it was really, really terrible. If I try something, that never really works. If I just wear something because I feel like myself and I’m comfortable, that’s okay—and that goes even for more edgy things. But if I try too much, or if I even try, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t feel natural, and I feel very uncomfortable.”
Comfort is key on the red carpet especially, but not in the way one might expect. On the topic, Cotillard doesn’t turn to near-miss anecdotes involving corsetry or “fashion tape,” but to mental clarity. “It’s always a weird feeling being on the red carpet, but the more I go, the more I try to connect myself to the here and now. And breathe. That’s the way I make the experience a good one. If I think too much—if my head is somewhere else because I’m stressed out—it shows.” Although, it shows only to those in attendance, the magazine readers who see the photos, and the Internet users who post and share them online—not to Cotillard herself. “I never look at any pictures of myself on the red carpet. I can’t do that.”
She makes a brief concession: “Sometimes I see a picture that my publicist shows me, but I never watch on my own.” But surely it’s part of the job, no? Cannily calculating all your best angles and poses and silhouettes and such? She refuses: “If they’re terrible, I feel bad. And to feel bad about a red carpet, I find it very stupid. So I prefer not to watch.”
Of late, there’s plenty of red carpet not-watching to do—a welcome reprieve from the strains of filming. Cotillard’s starring role in Macbeth required grueling days spent shooting in Scotland, where the play was set. “The elements were brutal,” says Cotillard of the film’s Isle of Skye location, “with the wind and the cold and the hailing—it was as intense as the story we were telling.” The story, if you remember your Shakespeare, is a woeful tale of prophecy, ambition, and murders enough to require a scorecard. In addition to the required amount of bloodshed, in this production Lady Macbeth is shown to have suffered the loss of a child—an event possible but not explicit in the original text. Cotillard’s preparation was decidedly not Method: “I never relate to my own life and my own feelings,” she says. “I don’t want to imagine my own reaction because I don’t want to think about those things as me and my life.” So instead, she took to YouTube to prepare for the role. “This might sound a bit weird, but I started watching [videos of] animals who had lost a child, like elephants and penguins, and all the devouring pain they fell in.” It was hard to watch, but helped keep a level of insulation from the constant emotional intensity required during filming. “Otherwise,” she says, “I would go crazy.”
There’s always room for a fatuous query or two at the denouement of a phone call. So here goes: What would Lady Macbeth wear if she were alive today? Power suits? Dior? “I hope not, for Dior’s sake!” Cotillard laughs, and pauses again. “I think there would be a very strong structure, but here and there would be little bits of flowing fabric, something that would try to escape. Maybe a suit, but just the vest, and a very long black skirt—twisted, pleated maybe.” Another woman’s ineffable style, writ large.
