Too hot to handle

So as I sit waiting for this paragon of 21st-century success in the plush and dizzyingly chic surroundings of the Hotel Costes in Paris, I am girding myself for a diva, but in the flesh, Bellucci is anything but. “I’m so sorr-ee, so sorr-ee I’m late,” she apologises in sexily accented English, even though she’s bang on time.

We settle on low red velvet chairs in a claret-coloured boudoir. Bellucci is tiny (film stars always are), with a magnificent décolleté revealed under her beautifully cut pinstripe Dolce & Gabbana trouser suit. “My first fashion show, when I was modelling, was for them. Everything they make is so well cut and feminine, elegant and sensual,” she says.

Her career began in her teens in Italy; she was going to be a lawyer, but was distracted by the doors that modelling opened. Italy, she says, is still a “macho culture, run by men — women are not as equal as in England or America”. Growing up there made her realise that “economic independence is the basis of female freedom. Earning your own money allows you to choose a man on your own terms. To choose a man because you need a protector, a livelihood, that is the most dangerous thing ever. I realised that when I was very young. So I have never had a credit card from a man in my life. It means marriage for me has been a romantic act, not money contract”.

Ah, Cassel. The couple were together for a decade before they had children. Why did she wait? “When I was younger, I was driven, obsessed by my work. I knew children would be a big responsibility and that I’d bear the burden; children are always the mother’s responsibility. I didn’t have them when I was younger, because I didn’t want to feel guilty about not being there. As you get older, you and your needs become less important. You have achieved a bit, so you are less driven. My work isn’t harmful for the kids now in the way it would have been when I was younger.”

She still finds it hard to strike a balance, though. We talk at length about the difficulties of reconciling a passion for your career with the pull of motherhood; there are, of course, no answers, just every woman’s own accommodation to her own subtly shifting sands of allegiances.

“A maman,” Bellucci eventually concludes, “also has the right to be happy, to have her own work and interests; otherwise she will not be a good mother.”

Maybe she talks so passionately about the importance of being there as a parent because absence is such a constant presence in her family life. As we talk, she admits that it is “rare” to get the whole family together in the same place. When they do, they all pile into bed together. “Those memories of family, of togetherness, are so important, no? When we are all together at the same time, we all sleep in the same bed like a gypsy family.”

When I ask if, now 46, she mourns the passing of her youthful bloom, she shrugs philosophically. “Biological youth is always going to go. But what is beautiful stays in a different way; it is all the things you have done and been.”

Surely, I say, when you’ve been listed as one of the world’s greatest beauties, the waning of that power must be hard? Her eyes flash, the shoulders go up and down in a paroxysm of irritated shrugging. “This is a list that other people have created, not me,” she says fiercely. “Yes, I am aware that I have an image, but it is a small, small part of me. I’m just a woman like anybody else.” She pauses and looks at me intently. “Know this. These lists, this fuss, it doesn’t bother my reality. What other people think? It’s not my priority.”

True romance: Bellucci with her husband, the actor Vincent Cassel (Venturelli)

Any actress in her late forties, however, must have thought about cosmetic surgery. “What do you think?” she responds, urging me to examine her face. Under her carefully cut fringe are wrinkles — no Botox there. She has lines around her mouth and pouches under her eyes. I’d say no surgery — yet (or not much, anyway). She sighs. “I don’t know how I’ll feel about it in 10 years’ time. But I hate it when young girls do things to themselves. There is nothing to fix. However beautiful they are, if they are doing that then they obviously don’t feel it.” Body image, self-esteem, she tells me, passionately, “it’s all about love. Love is what makes you feel good about yourself”.

So, tell me more about Mr Sexy, I say. She laughs at the moniker. “I think he’s sexy. It’s important to go on thinking that about your husband. But Vincent is not a normal man. Sometimes I love him so much, sometimes I want to kill him.” Next year, she and Cassel are making a movie — “a love story, of course” — together in Rio. “For five months, it will be so wonderful. We will all be together.” The couple spend as much time as they can in Brazil; Cassel is a devotee of capoeira (the Brazilian blend of martial art and dance), and they both love the music.

She talks about how a relationship changes when children arrive. “It is so special to discover your husband as a father. It has been so great to see Vincent as a mature man who can shoulder his responsibilities and do that. It makes me think I made a good choice.” Cassel, she says, wanted children before she did. “He’d wanted to be a father for a long time. Sometimes men say that, but when they get the reality, they don’t know what to do, they can’t handle it. If a man is a bad father, you lose respect for him.”

We talk about the nature of relationships, of men, how love comes in different forms. Passion, she says, you can feel “for the worst man you ever met. But that has nothing to do with a deeper partnership. In such a one, passion stays, but more important is confidence, respect, knowing a man is not just loyal in a sex way, but that they will be there for you. That is more important than just fidelity”.

I sense that we are now entering deep waters; perhaps entering the cultural chasm between an Italian understanding of marriage’s sacred contract and a more Anglo-Saxon tradition. Does she mean that fidelity, in a sexual sense, is not important?

She gives another one of her famous shrugs, but continues, almost nonchalantly: “It would be ridiculous to ask that of him if I haven’t been there for two months. You can’t ask such a thing as who has he been seeing, what has he been up to? It is more respectful and realistic to take the view that you’ll be with me when I see you.”

Ah, I say, discretion. She shakes her head. “No. I am talking about loyalty and, most important of all, elegance.” She repeats the word several times, explaining what she means. Elegance, for Bellucci, isn’t merely the cut of a suit, but a whole way of being in the world, of living in the present. This elegance is as French as a Gallic shrug, as Italian as a beautiful young girl on the back of a scooter zooming around Rome. It is about a passion for the moment, a sense that as long as everything is good when they are together, that they choose to be there and everything flows, then nothing else matters.

As I said, there is always a compromise.

Parli italiano? Click to see the trailer of Monica in her new Italian-language film, Manuale d'amore 3