ELLE
August 2001
Interview by MICHEL PEYRARD
(transcript by Meeps)

Vanessaīs Paradise

Joe Le Taxi, a commercial for Chanel and Lenny Kravitz. Vanessa Paradis has experienced a great deal - and now her love affair with Johnny Depp seems to show up on paparazzi pictures in all the worldīs newspapers. Her own mouth has been closed tight. Until now ...

Vanessa Paradis lives without doubt. It is just like her to get a child with Johnny Depp after having only known him for three months.

Her whole life she has been in a hurry. Just seven years old she sang on T.V. for the first time. When she was fourteen she recorded the hit song Joe Le Taxi. Sixteen years old she got an award for her first movie role.

Later she signed on a huge deal in order to act as a model for Chanelīs perfume line, recorded an album with Serge Gainsbourg and one with Lenny Kravitz - and managed to have a well-published love affair with the latter.

Now Vanessa Paradis is 28, and in the fall came her fourth album, Bliss, for which she had made all the lyrics and music herself. The songs are about her new life with Johnny and their two-year old daughter, Lily-Rose.

Q: When one listens to your record, one quickly gets the impression that you are rudely harmonious.

A: I am rudely harmonious. I live with a man I love. We have a little daughter, who is the sunshine of our lives. I have made this record for them, for us. When I worked with it I wanted them to be proud of me.

Q: Johnny Depp shows up on the album. Can't it be difficult combining private life and one's career?

A: The difficulties come if you don't respect one another. If you are not each other's best friend. You can work together or let work separate you. The important thing is to keep the relationship alive, to safeguard the love, respect and generosity, even if it is only through a phone conversation or a fax.

Q: One track is dedicated to your daughter, and is about the difficulties of staying pure "in a world that isn't." Do you think children are born good and it is society who corrupts them?

A: Yes, I think that the first three years of your life you are pure and innocent.

Q: Yes, but about the age of four, people start pulling the wings off of flies.

A: Children don't know what they are doing. When I was little, I loved to be rude to people. Children don't understand the effects of words and actions. One of my musicians' daughters cut the tail off a cat. Not because she is evil, but as an experiment. (laughter)

Q: How will you protect Lily-Rose from all the bad things in the world?

A: We will never have secrets from one another. Maybe I am over-protective, but I will not swaddle her in a cocoon. When she turns eighteen, I will not always be there to protect her. That is a period in life where you get some tremendous blows, and one is not always ready to defend oneself.

Q: Is her father just as protective?

A: Perhaps even more than I am.

Q: How do you manage when you are on tour?

A: That is a bit complicated. I try to manage things so I can be with her as much as possible - otherwise I don't go. I can't live without her.

Q: Have you made the picture on the cover of your CD?

A: No, that is my darling who took the picture and then worked on it in the computer, but I have made the little drawings on the inside of the cover. It is precisely as if you have made a present and want to wrap it yourself. I haven't done it all on my own, but I have placed a lot of myself in it.

Q: It reminds me a bit of such a photo album a mother makes to her new born child. One even hears your daughter's voice on the record.

A: That was precisely the feeling I was trying to get across.

Q: Where do you live most - France or the States?

A: I live where I work. And when I don't work, I live where my darling works. If he doesn't work, either, then we live in our house in southern France.

Q: The words "my darling" sound lovely. But shouldn't you rather say, "my husband"?

A: We are not married.

Q: That is why I asked.

A: I don't feel any need for getting married. We are neither for nor against marriage, it is just not necessary. When I was younger and before I met him, I dreamed as other girls about weddings, of carrying his name and all that. We started by having a child instead. Three months after we met.

Q: What is it you think is so attractive about him?

A: Everything. Even his faults. Because he has some of those, too, luckily.

Q: On one track you sing: "I stopped searching for myself, when I found you." Is that how you feel?

A. I had never imagined a life with movies, music and huge success. But I have felt that if you experience such things alone, something is not right. To have somebody to share life with is success. Even though I do understand that there are people who make other choices.

Q: Is it because you have one another that you no longer use make-up?

A: Tonight I have to perform and then I use make-up, but in private it is great to be able to dry one eyes without worrying about the eye liner and let the skin breath. Before, it seemed like I was forced to accept my body - today, my man loves me as I am. I don't have to make an effort for other people - except for the audience and the camera. But that doesn't mean that I don't care about how I look. I love beautiful clothes, preferably with pearls and embroideries from the 30s.

Q: Your parents have lived together for a long time. Does it feel like you have to do at least as well as they have?

A: No, no two lives are alike. Most of my parentsī friends have been separated or divorced. My mother has always said, "Do you think it has been easy for us?" To live together for thirty years is not easy. My parents have probably had it just as tough as their friends. They have just had more patience.

Q: Do you have a lot of patience?

A: More than Johnny. I was impulsive and un-organized before. Now, when we are going anywhere, I have to plan both my own packing and all that Lily-Rose needs. And today I am so well organized that my mother just laughs, because it is so unlike me. At the same time, I know that when my darling is impulsive and unbearable, I must calm him down. But it's not like I handle everything, we take turns. Sometimes I do feel an urge to scream or throw a dish into the wall. Once in awhile one must do so. But in the end, one of us must give in, if only it is not always the same person. Johnny just needs a spark and he explodes. But he can also be very calm. He can control his inner demons. And then he is more calm than I am.

Q: It sounds a bit surprising since you have both had an image as rebellious and provocative.

A: I have never seen myself as a rebel. I actually find that a ridiculous thought. If I have provoked, it has happen without my wanting to. He is the same. When he has hit something or run amok there has always been a reason for it somewhere. Iīll not go into details. That is his history and most of it happened before we met.

Q: Do you think it is true that if a man hasn't rebelled before he is 20, there is something wrong?

A: Yes, you calm down over the years. You don't rebel any longer, you don't protest, you get more pliable. We must teach Lily-Rose to protest. (laughter) I think she has already learned it by herself.

Q: Is it the same things, that makes you react?

A: Yes, almost. What we always react against is badly done work, nasty things - everything which is too cheap.

Q: Bliss is an album which is very intimate, but never improper. Were you never in doubt when making it?

A: No, because I didn't open any doors - my record is about everyday stuff, which everybody can recognize. I seldom talk about my private life. I have done that now. I don't want people to believe that I keep quiet because I have something awful to hide. Because I live a very beautiful life. And I just couldn't help not telling about us. When I am in love, when I am happy, I want to tell it to the whole world.

END OF ARTICLE

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