French actress Juliette Binoche first made a name for herself with 1985’s Rendez-vous, and since then she’s appeared in various films, including The English Patient and Chocolat. For her latest film, Certified Copy, she won the award for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival. Here she talks to View London’s Matthew Turner about Certified Copy, travelling to Iran and the magic of Tuscany.

How did you get involved with the film, first of all?
Juliette Binoche (JB): I saw [director Abbas Kiarostami] at the Cannes festival several times on different occasions and we have a friend in common, Jean-Claude Carriere. And so each time I said to him, you know, I'd love to work with him. He said, 'Well, come to Iran'. And the last time he said that to me, I thought, how can I go there with everything that is happening between Iran and France and England that was so frightening, you know, reading our newspapers, all the threats and all. But I thought, I want to know by myself, I want to know what's happening in the streets and in houses, and what it felt like, because Abbas was saying, 'No, no, no, no, just come – you'll see it's not what they said in the newspapers', so I finally came.

I wanted to work with him but at the same time thinking it's not real, because he doesn't work with actors and he only works in Iran, so what do I expect? But at the same time I was wishing – and for a long time, because after the Oscar, for example, they asked me what do I want to do and they said, 'Do you want to move to America and live here and make your career in America?' and I said 'No, I just want to work with Abbas Kiarostami', so I had that in mind already, wanting to work with great artists and directors. Not that there's no great directors in America, but just in a different way. And so finally I went there and one evening he started telling me a story, in great detail and at the end of it he said, 'Do you believe me?' and I said, 'Yes' and he said, 'Well, it's not true' and I laughed of course, because of the situation in the film, you know, the story is 'Where's the reality, where's the fiction?' and then I was living the same thing in a way. And I laughed the next day and the day after as well.

And as we were driving to Isfahan in Iran, his DP on the film, he was driving and I was dozing behind in the car, tired from jet lag and I heard the driver, the DP laughing and I said, 'Are you telling about this moment?' and he said, 'Yes, how do you know because I'm talking in Farsi?' and then the DP said, 'Well, you should make the movie. You should make this movie because it's really something special'. And so I made a little contract and we signed with fingerprints.

You and William Shimell seem to be playing male and female archetypes in the film.
JB: Right, it's like Adam and Eve. Absolutely. That was his idea, that's why he didn't give [my character] a name. Because it was more the archetype, as you were saying, of the woman. And what Abbas is saying, in other words, is that women expose themselves more easily emotionally and take a risk of being ridiculous, of being needy and pleading on their knees and provoking the man as much as she can until something comes out of him, as he's more protective in a thought world. That's why he chose him as a writer, liking stories, blah blah blah, but not involving himself emotionally. So that was actually his purpose.

How much of you is in that character? What did you bring to it of your own experiences? She's a very strong, mercurial woman – could you relate to that at all?
JB: I had to! I had no choice! Well, you use everything you can from your life, from your intimacy, from your past, from your imagination. I think there are moments where she's very much, you know – at the beginning, she has this kind of force, of going forward and driving the car and taking him to a specific place and walking him to a specific place – she is driving the situation, the story, until there's a moment where she feels unsettled and then it goes to different layers, like in the cafe, when she's talking about her and her son and how she relates herself to this and you don't know whether it's true or not and that's not the purpose, in a way, to know whether it's true, but there's something you see of different layers, until there's a moment where he doesn't play the role of the man, the husband.

You've managed to raise children without being married – you've managed to make it work.
JB: Oh, I have – my story is different, but it's as complicated, probably. I mean, even if you're in a couple and you have children, sometimes you very, very much feel alone, raising the child on your own, because the other one is away or has a different point of view or doesn't want to take care of that side of the problem with the child or that side of the situation, so you can feel alone even though you're married or even though you're raising a child with someone.

What kind of direction did you get at the different stages of the script, because obviously there are very subtle shifts in the relationship all the time? What kind of direction did Abbas give you on how to play those scenes?
JB: I mean, there was a script. It was written and we rehearsed for like two weeks before. But I have to say that I felt totally free while we were doing it. So free that sometimes I provoked him without wanting to. Like sometimes I would play, I would act and then all of a sudden he would – not knowing where we were going and you know, he'd step out of the room and when he came back he'd say – well, he said first, before leaving, 'I have to think about what happened', you know, because he didn't expect to come that way.

And then coming back, he'd say, 'You women, you're really going so fast with your intuition, because you knew before me that that would go that far'. I didn't know! I was discovering while I was playing it as well. But then he said, because he was editing every night, he said, 'Well, I'll edit this moment and see whether it works or not and if it doesn't work, we'll shoot this scene again tomorrow in a different way or we'll carry on if it works.' And the next day he actually said it works so we can carry on, but at the final editing he didn't take that specific take, he took another one that was more controlled, in a way.

Did you find the atmosphere of Tuscany romantic?
JB: It depends what you think of as romantic. The 19th century romantic is wild and dark and the romantic nowadays is Barbie dolls, right? So a lot of romanticism. Is it romantic? I don't think that way. It's certainly a land of power, Tuscany, because of its history. You feel the ancient olive trees as well as the painters living there, the saints and there's kind of a tradition you feel in the homes you're surrounded by. There were seven churches in this village, you know, bells, free, so it was quite a powerful place. The stones are very vibrant, you know.

At the same time you can feel a sort of stuckness as well because the movement of life is – how do you liberate yourself from it, in a way? But from my own personal experience, I had The English Patient too, in me, so it was specific to come back to that place, where I'd shot with Anthony Minghella, who left us, so it was meaningful - it was painful as well, but joyful too.