Actress Juliette Binoche believes in rehearsing: "I have to work months, to train"

French actress Juliette Binoche is in Singapore to accompany her film, Clouds Of Sils Maria. For Binoche, working with Kristen Stewart and Chloe Moretz opened her eyes to how vastly different working styles could be between two American actresses of
French actress Juliette Binoche is in Singapore to accompany her film, Clouds Of Sils Maria. For Binoche, working with Kristen Stewart and Chloe Moretz opened her eyes to how vastly different working styles could be between two American actresses of roughly the same age. -- ST PHOTO: KUA CHEE SIONG

For French actress Juliette Binoche, working with Kristen Stewart and Chloe Moretz opened her eyes to how vastly different working styles could be between two American actresses of roughly the same age.

In her new film The Clouds Of Sils Maria, Binoche, 50, plays an actress who has to grapple with a fractured ego, while Stewart plays her young assistant.

As there is a complex play-within-a-play concept in the film, the French actress wanted to get all the emotional beats right.

"We had a big chunk of scenes together, so we needed to spend time together to rehearse. We did a few hours of rehearsals together in Berlin, and it was not her cup of tea. It's not her method," she told press gathered at the Raffles Hotel on Friday afternoon.

Binoche is in Singapore attend the Singapore premier of her drama, which opens Friday night.

"In the morning she would read some lines and she would know it. I'm not like that. I have to work months, to train. But we spent a lot of time together in real life, so we developed a genuine understanding of other," she says of the 24-year-old American actress.

The 17-year-old Chloe Grace Moretz, who plays a young actress stealing the limelight from Binoche's character was far more open to suggestions, but then she is younger than Stewart, observes Binoche.

"They both started very young in movies, that's what they have in common." says Binoche.

She observed with some amusement that the teenage Moretz never travel alone.

"She travels with her family, there's a family gang coming to the set," she says.

Now one of the most internationally-recognised French actresses, Binoche had established herself as an actress on home soil before leaving, and soon found international acclaim with English-language roles such The Unbearable Lightness Of Being (1988), also winning a supporting actresss Oscar for The English Patient (1996).

She smiles when she is asked if her performances are affected by which language she has to speak.

She feels the answer is beyond her, adding that the issue is far more complex than just language; there is also the matter of the character's background and context of the movie.

"I did a film in Chile in which I spoke English with a Spanish accent. I was an American in a film by a Spanish director. The evolution of movies in Europe is going forward. English is an important language, but its spoken with a lot of different influences," she says.

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