Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Scott Macaulay interviewed La Vie en rose star Marion Cotillard for the Spring ’07 issue. La Vie en rose is nominated for Best Lead Actress (Marion Cotillard), Best Costume Design (Marit Allen) and Best Makeup (Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald).

In person, French actress and star Marion Cotillard is tall, confident and with a quicksilver responsiveness that skips from laughter and exuberance to moments of intense thought and introspection. Dressed casually in blue jeans and a blouse, taking interviews at New York’s Gramercy Hotel, she seems very far away from the character of Edith Piaf she plays in Olivier Dahan’s La Vie en rose, which just had its American premiere at New York’s “Rendezvous with French Cinema” series.

I am careful to say here “the character of Edith Piaf.” While Piaf fans will marvel at Cotillard’s ability to seemingly inhabit the diminutive body (Piaf was 4’8”) of the beloved French singer and icon, the actress is quite clear that her performance is a construct, a synthesis of what’s known of Piaf’s life story, Dahan’s dramatic interpretation of it, and elements of Cotillard herself. click here to read full story