Silent surprise

IF you haven’t yet heard of Peppy Miller or Berenice Bejo, you soon will. They’re both actresses, but only one of them is real. French actress Bejo plays Peppy, a young wannabe silent movie star trying to make her way in Thirties Hollywood, in the silent, black and white film The Artist, which is already hotly tipped for awards.

Hailed as the feel-good hit of May’s Cannes Film Festival, The Artist has received Golden Globe nominations for Best Motion Picture, Best Actor for Jean Dujardin (who plays fading screen icon George Valentin) and Best Supporting Actress for Bejo.

With her sparkling eyes, glossy dark hair and classic looks, the actress is every inch the modern screen icon and it’s easy to see why her director husband, Michel Hazanavicius, wrote the film with her in mind.

“Peppy was written for me, so I knew there was a lot of me in her,” says Bejo, 35, looking effortlessly chic in simple jeans, a T-shirt and a black jacket.

While George Valentin reigns at the silent movie box office, Peppy is a young ingenue, totally starstruck by their first meeting on the red carpet for one of his premieres. Peppy by name and by nature, the aspiring actress turns an awkward moment into an opportunity for publicity when she drops a kiss on his cheek.

“I enjoyed everything on this movie, but that was a difficult scene to film, because Michel was very far away. There were so many extras, so we were kind of alone.

“When you’re acting and you hear ‘Cut!’ from far away, you don’t know if it’s good. We’d been shooting for so many weeks and suddenly I wasn’t sure of myself, but now I love this scene. She’s so cute on the red carpet, and so funny,” giggles Argentinian-born Bejo in her soft French accent.

Hazanavicius had dreamed of making a silent film for 20 years, but had to wait until he’d made a name for himself with his OSS 117 spy movie parodies, starring both Dujardin and Bejo.

And while his stars first laughed at the idea, they soon warmed to it: “We said, ‘If you finance it, we’ll be there’,” recalls Bejo.

“He said, ‘I don’t want a pantomime; I’ll show you some movies and you’ll see the acting is very simple, very normal’.

“We all know Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, which is over the top, because it was comedy, but dramas weren’t like that – I was very reassured when I saw them.”

Filming with an English-speaking cast and crew – including John Goodman and Malcolm McDowell – had its moments (“You have to eat lunch in just half-an-hour”) and working so closely with her husband wasn’t all plain sailing, either.

“We once had an argument and it was so funny, because we went behind a set and were going ‘argh rah rah’ in French, and the crew, who were all American, were like, ‘Are they fighting?’ At one point, we started laughing because it was so stupid,” she giggles.

BEJO grew up watching old films with her mum and dad, and it was seeing the golden age of Hollywood on screen that made her want to be an actress.

“My favourite actor was Robert Mitchum when I was ten years old. So when Michel said, ‘I want to write a movie that’s set in Thirties Hollywood’, it was perfect for me,”

Valentin is very much the central character, as the plot revolves around his reluctance to embrace the ‘talkies’, while a smitten Peppy’s star is busily rising – so Bejo made sure her scenes counted.

All her hard work is paying off as audiences and critics are falling in love with Peppy and The Artist, but the awards season will involve doing many more rounds of publicity.

“Can it be any more intense than what I’m doing now?” laughs Bejo, who’s reluctant to comment on her Oscar chances.

“I won’t be crying in my bed if I don’t get nominated, because it’s already so amazing.”

Bejo lives in Paris with Hazanavicius, their three-month-old baby and three-year-old son, plus his two daughters from a previous marriage. So there’s no way she’ll be moving to LA when Hollywood starts calling.

“Oh no, I can’t move out of Paris, but as an actor, you don’t need to live there.

You’re doing a movie for two months, normally, they never shoot movies in LA, so I’ll be on location. ‘Mummy’s going to work for two months and she’ll be back for weekends’ – great!” she says, smiling.

“For me as an actor, I already have all I want. In France, I changed stature. I got so many scripts and have met so many directors. If I have something more, it’s great, but I’m already so thankful to the movie for everything that’s already arrived.”

• The Artist is out tomorrow