Vive la difference
When Ludivine Sagnier was 17, she faced what she now describes as 'the choice of my life'. She could have toured France with a theatre production, but would have had to forfeit a degree in literature at the Sorbonne.
'I chose the tour and I turned down my studies,' she says, giggling at her youthful audacity. 'And all my parents' friends were completely shocked: 'How could you let your daughter do that? You cannot let her do whatever she wants - she must study or she'll become a tramp!' But my parents were very confident in me. My mother said to me, 'If you give yourself entirely to your work, then there's no reason to fail.''
Since then, the nearest Sagnier has come to becoming a tramp has been on the big screen. She played the prostitute-lover of Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, in Lee Tamahori's English-language thriller Devil's Double, which premieres at the Berlin Film Festival in February.
The 31-year-old is now one of France's most well-known and prolific actresses, with more than 30 diverse films to her name.
Her talent is on display in the two films Sagnier was promoting during her visit to Hong Kong last week, both screening at this year's French Cinepanorama. They are Alain Corneau's slick thriller Love Crime, in which she plays a high-flying marketing executive plotting revenge against her manipulative mentor (played by Kristin Scott Thomas), and Fabienne Barthaud's gritty drama Lily Sometimes, in which Sagnier plays an uninhibited young woman embroiled in a love-hate relationship with her uptight elder sister (Diane Kruger).
Sagnier describes the two films as 'ice and fire'. Her character in Love Crime, the disciplined and well-dressed Isabelle Guerin, is an introvert who she describes as being 'obsessed with order and excellence'. Meanwhile, her titular character in Lily Sometimes is a lucid, hyperactive individual who articulates her thoughts and follows her desires. It was demanding, as 'she has to be performed without any agenda ... she doesn't have any inner thoughts, she just expresses everything she feels.'