Isabelle Huppert on nudity, the Paris protests and her reputation: ‘I think it’s easy to work with me’

As she portrays a true-life whistleblower who fought to clear her name, the César-winning, Oscar-nominated star of ‘Elle’, ‘The Piano Teacher’ and ‘Call My Agent’ – who is widely considered France’s most remarkable actor – speaks to Jasper Rees

‘Why would I regret? I can be sorry for the film, for sure, but I don’t regret for myself’ (Getty Images)

Isabelle Huppert has played a nun who writes erotica, a self-harming piano teacher, a murderous postmistress, a vengeful rape victim, a patricidal prostitute, a drug-dealing translator, a matronly stalker, a sex-obsessed mother. How best to sum up the irreducible career of perhaps France’s most remarkable actor? “LOVER,” declares the dark blue T-shirt she’s wearing today, on the ninth floor of a glass-walled hotel overlooking St Pancras station. A more apt epithet would probably be “WORKAHOLIC”.

That was the caricature proposed by the French comedy drama Call My Agent!, in which Huppert played herself as an actress who just can’t say no, working day and night on two films in two languages while also nonchalantly accepting the stage role of Hamlet. “You have the stamina of a Nepalese Sherpa,” her fictional agent tells her.

“That was quite funny,” Huppert remembers. She emits a conspiratorial giggle. “It’s all an exaggeration, of course. I participated in the writing. And what was worst came from me.”