EMPIRE TALKS TO THE WONDERFUL EVA GREEN ABOUT THE DREAMERS, THE THREE MUSKETEERS, BOND AND MORE

WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

THE NAME MAY be English and, more often than not, the accent is too. The CV is also littered with American and British films. But make no mistake —Eva Green is as French as they come. (It’s pronounced Ey-va, for one thing.) “Sometimes I wish my name was ‘Dupont’ or something more French, so people saw how much work I put into the English,” she tells Empire, on the phone from Normandy.

However, her career is currently bookended by French movies. The most recent is Martin Bourboulon’s The Three Musketeers: Milady, in which, as one of the title characters, she constantly outsmarts and outswashbuckles the other title characters. The first is The Dreamers, the Bernardo Bertolucci-directed drama that was Green’s debut film in 2003, and which launched her onto the scene in spectacular fashion as a young woman who engages in a most unusual ménage-à-trois with a young American student (Michael Pitt) and her own brother (Louis Garrel) in 1968 Paris. Green is extraordinary in the film, charting a complex character’s trials and tribulations, and baring her body and soul. It’s no wonder that Hollywood came calling almost immediately, with Ridley Scott’s Kingdom Of Heaven and then Casino Royale and Vesper Lynd —the most impactful of all Bond girls —coming soon after.

Now, with both The Dreamers (in a bells-and-whistles re-release) and Milady coming out together, Empire lui parle de son incroyable carrière.

This is quite a serendipitous time, with The Dreamers and The Three Musketeers: Milady both coming out.

They’re so different. When I think of The Dreamers, I was like a baby. It was my first film, and one of my favourite experiences actually, as a human. Maybe the only thing the characters have in common is that they like to play different people. The character of Isabelle in The Dreamers is a bit of an actress, but there’s something psychotic about Milady.