She plays the fantasy girlfriend in a hip new film, all Gitanes and Gallic attitude – but the model-actor-singer (and DJ Mark Ronson’s other half) says she’s a tomboy at heart
French women. Wow. One would prefer to believe it’s all a cliche: the black eyeliner, the Gitanes purr, the wind-you-round-their-chipped-Chanel-nail-varnished-little-finger pout. Except here I am, perched at one end of a sofa in a studio in the 11th arrondissement of Paris with Joséphine de La Baume curled up at the other end, a one-woman forcefield of feline, Gallic charm. The slow smile, the sleepy, half-closed eyes, the hand absent-mindedly raking hair off her face. She has an easy sensuality that – seemingly without trying – casts the bronzed, hard-bodied, Americanised version of hotness into the shade.
But you know what? It’s actually a total drag, being young Hollywood’s go-to French Dream Girl. “I always get the girl who is French and liberated and stylised. I dream of playing a girl who is a tomboy, tough, in the mud; but no. Never.” De La Baume pouts, then laughs. “I’m lucky if someone offers me a part where I don’t have to smoke and drink wine in every scene.” It’s a hard life, right? But then, as de La Baume adds, “On the other hand, I do get to be grumpy and feisty and a pain in the ass, because that’s very French.”
De La Baume has more about her than the picture captions on the social pages and men’s magazines would have you believe
We don’t go out, we don’t even go to the pub. All we do is watch films and hang out
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