Extended Interview with Isabelle Huppert: Woman of Many Faces

Editor's Note: A previous, abridged version of this interview ran earlier this week. Below is the extended version.

Isabelle Huppert never aims to please. Which is what makes her so alluring. Over thirty years she has scorned the lovable and the easy roles, instead choosing the distressed, the complex and the cruel. But from the young girl seduced and abandoned in the Lace Maker (1977), through the murderer in La Ceremonie (1995), to the sado-masochistic “heroine” of The Piano Teacher (2001), she has never seemed anything but entirely real.

Over the years master photographers have tried to capture something of her mystery, from Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau to Richard Avedon and Herb Ritts, from Nan Goldin to Annie Leibovitz.

4 years ago the Museum of Modern Art/PS1 in New York gathered these portraits into an exhibition, “Isabelle Huppert: Woman of Many Faces”. Since then more than a quarter of a million people around the world have seen the show. In June Huppert will open the show’s latest iteration, now including portraits by Chinese photographers Quentin Shih, Wen Fang and Yang Fudong, in Beijing, with the latest edition of the book of the exhibition being made available at the same time. Huppert spoke to the Beijinger by phone from France.

the Beijinger: How similar is it to sit for a portrait as to prepare for a film role?

Isabelle Huppert: It’s quite different, except for that moment when the camera is on you. Most of the time when you do a portrait you don’t even think about it before. Like Cartier-Bresson said “It happens at the moment that you do it”. But then there is this similarity, at the moment you find yourself in front of the camera, any camera, you disappear from yourself.. And out of this emptiness you try to make something happen.

tbj: How much is the making of a portrait a collaboration?

IH: Like when you’re making a film, there’s a dialogue. When someone films you or takes your portrait, there’s a kind of mute dialogue. The real core of the adventure is undertaken in silence. It’s something you feel, that’s what makes it exciting. And what you feel is that there is a person, someone who gives you a little bit of their soul, and tries to capture a bit of your’s as well.

tbj: What did you feel when you saw the exhibition for the first time, was it strange seeing all these pictures of you up on the wall?

IH: I suppose now I’m quite used to it, but the first time I saw it was such a shock (laughs), it was very strange for me, it’s hard to describe.

tbj: Like your life passing before your eyes?

IH: Yes!

tbj: Is there one photograph you particularly like?

IH: I can’t say, there are so many that I like, because all of them remind me of the moment they were taken. I particularly remember the moments I spent with [Edouard] Boubat, and [Robert] Doisneau, because with them I spent a lot of time walking in the streets of Paris. They were like poets trying to capture a little bit of that world. We were walking and talking for hours, sometimes for days – it was so beautiful. There are people who work in movement and people who work still, and it creates a completely different kind of relationship. Mostly it is a relationship of extreme and great confidence. I was totally confident with all these people that I have worked with.

tbj: Have any of the portraits of yourself ever made you feel something so strongly that you didn’t want to see them exhibited?

IH: I was always happy with the collaborations, but of course there’s always a question mark. At the end sometimes you get a surprise, and sometimes it’s a bad surprise! It’s exciting, there’s something unknown, you never really know how it’s going to be.

“Isabelle Huppert: Woman of Many Faces” runs from 19 Jun-19 Jul at the UCCA (8459 9269).