Balancing a career with motherhood is never easy, but somehow Monica Bellucci manages this feat while both looking gorgeous and playing some very unattractive characters

Statuesque Italian beauty Monica Bellucci has a habit of playing against type. The sultry, voluptuous 43-year-old actor is consistently rated as one of the world’s most gorgeous women and yet, time and time again, she plumps up for the kind of gritty and controversial film roles that other leading ladies might shy away from.

Mary Magdalen in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, a prostitute in Combien tu m’aime? (How Much do You Love Me?) alongside Gérard Depardieu, and the victim of a brutal rape in the acclaimed but tough-to-watch Irréversible are hardly the most romantic fare. Her latest film, the Hollywood action thriller Shoot ‘Em Up is no different – try a lactating prostitute for a challenge!

We caught up with the impeccably groomed Bellucci, resplendent in a slinky Dior number, in the suite of a luxury New York hotel while she was promoting the new film. So why the big attraction to the dark side? “You don’t know why you choose some characters instead of others. I should go to therapy,’ she laughs. “You just read a script and say: ‘Oh, this very interesting.’ But it’s incredible, because I’m very interested in very dark films all the time. I don’t know why.”

In Shoot ‘Em Up, Bellucci’s character, called DQ, teams up with a mysterious loner (played by dashing Brit Clive Owen) to protect a newborn baby from a criminal and his armed posse. As a mother herself, of three-year-old daughter Deva, this seems a terrifying prospect. Why did she agree to play the part?

She laughs again: “Because I’m crazy. I received the script, I was in Europe, and I went: ‘Oh, my God!’ It was sooo crazy, but at the same time it was so original. And I didn’t know anything about the lactating stuff. Nobody explained it to me or did any big research about lactating prostitutes. But all you need to know is that her child was killed by her pimp, so she doesn’t want to have violent men around her.”

“The movie is violent, but at the same time it’s rock ’n’ roll,” Bellucci continues. “It’s dark, it’s scary, but with a lot of humour. And in the middle of this mess and violence, DQ brings the emotion because she’s a prostitute with a good heart, a mother at the same time.” Because of the nature of some scenes in the film, an animatronic baby was used, enabling Clive Owen to play a somewhat black-humoured joke. “The real baby was never put at risk. Most of the time we had the fake baby, thank God! Me and Clive, we did like a fake situation and when they said ‘Action!’ the baby just fell. Everything stopped on the set. It went so quiet,” she grins mischievously. “Of course, they soon realised it was with the fake baby.”

Reflecting on this role and her portfolio of work in general, she realises it may be some time before Deva gets to witness her mother in action on the big screen. “She’s going to be very old because I’ve done very difficult and violent movies, but I’m not violent in life. I love my daughter like nothing else in the world. It was just the most beautiful thing that can happen to a woman, for me, to get pregnant, to give birth, to have a baby. I’m so much stronger and happier. It came at just the most perfect moment in my life, I was ready for it.

“And I would love to have another child. But I’m still an actress, so if some crazy movie comes along, then I’m ready for it, I’ll do it. Now that I’m a mother, I don’t have to just play fairy tales and be a good girl. The message I have to send to my daughter is: I may not be a good girl on the screen, but I’m a good mother.”

Bellucci says she’d happily make a film her daughter could see, should the right script turn up. As for Deva following in her footsteps, she’s not adverse to the idea. If that happened, it would make her the third generation of actors in the family on her father’s side. “Can you imagine?” gasps Bellucci, who has been married for eight years to Vincent Cassel, the son of the late French actor Jean-Pierre Cassel. “I think it’s so important in life to have a passion and if her passion turns out to be acting, why not? It will be her decision. She can be an actress, but she doesn’t need to be a model!”

Bellucci was an Elite model herself for 20 years from the age of 16. Born in Umbria, she only started modelling to help fund her law degree while studying at the University of Perugia. She moved to the fashion capital of Milan at the height of her modelling career, but soon TV and film roles beckoned. Her English language film debut was Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992.

She now shares homes in London and Paris with her husband and daughter and rarely chases work outside Europe. She admits to being somewhat baffled by America’s fascination with her. “My career is very strange,” she muses. “I don’t understand it because I’m truly European. I live between London, Rome and Paris and all my friends and family are there. I never said: ‘I’m going to go to America.’ I’ve never lived there. I do French movies, Italian movies, European movies, so when I receive scripts from America I say: ‘How is it possible? I’m never there.’”

Her forthcoming film will be a far more European affair, with fabulous French screen sirens inspiring her look. “It’s called Le Deuxième Souffle – in English it’s going to be The Second Wind or Second Breath,” she reveals. “I’m blonde in the movie, very blonde. It works very well. It’s a French thriller from the end of 50s and beginning of the 60s. I wanted to play those women I dreamed about, like Catherine Deneuve or Brigitte Bardot, so it’s that kind of look.”

As well as these French stars, Bellucci also reveres Italian actresses with whom she shares a similar allure. “I grew up with an Italian culture, all the Fellini, Rossellini movies and all those women like Monica Vitti and Sophia Loren – women so mature, so close to the earth – and this is my culture. I’m sure that even though I don’t want it, I am those kinds of things because it’s part of my identity.” And yet she’s still reluctant to consider herself a sex symbol. “No, I can’t talk about myself. I’m too old for that,” she says. “I won’t do this forever. You have no idea about how people see you. I make films and covers of magazines and then, how the people see you, I have no control over it.”

The ageing process isn’t likely to be the reason why Bellucci will start turning down work in the future, though. “At the moment my daughter always travels with me,” she explains. “I’m lucky because you can’t do that in every job. She doesn’t go to school, but that’s going to change in three years. Then I won’t work any more, I’m going to stay out of the business.”

But it’s her mischievous side coming to the fore again. “No, I’m kidding. But I will make only a few movies a year, that’s for sure, because when you have a child and she goes to school, it becomes really difficult. It’s difficult to be an actress and a good mother at the same time, and I prefer to be a good mother.”

FR » Un rôle maternel

Considérée comme l’une des plus belles femmes du monde, Monica Bellucci n’en a pas moins décidé d’opter la plupart du temps pour des rôles sulfureux et controversés dans des films comme The Passion of the Christ, Irréversible, et son dernier en date Shoot ‘Em Up. Elle joue le rôle d’une prostituée, nourrice à la fois, qui fait équipe avec un ténébreux solitaire (Clive Owen) pour protéger un bébé orphelin d’une bande de criminels.

Etant elle-même mère – de la petite Deva, trois ans – pourquoi choisit-elle des rôles tellement sombres? “Parce que je suis dingue,” s’esclaffe-t-elle. “Vous ne savez pas pourquoi vous choisissez certains personnages plutôt que d’autres. Je devrais suivre une thérapie.”

Lorsqu’elle parle de sa fille, Bellucci déclare que “c’est la plus belle chose qui puisse arriver à une femme”, mais elle n’a pas le sentiment de devoir choisir des contes de fées du simple fait d’être mère. “Le message que je dois transmettre à ma fille est : je ne suis peut-être pas une fille sérieuse à l’écran, mais je suis une bonne mère.”

Si Deva décide de se lancer à son tour dans le métier d’actrice, elle représentera la troisième génération dans sa famille paternelle. Le mari de Bellucci depuis huit ans, Vincent Cassel, est le fils du feu acteur français Jean-Pierre Cassel. Il faut toutefois souligner que Bellucci ne voit pas d’un bon œil l’idée que Deva embrasse cette carrière, même si ellemême connaît le succès depuis 20 ans. Bellucci admet son étonnement devant la fascination que les Américains ont pour elle : “Je ne comprends pas, car je suis une vraie européenne. Je vis à Londres et à Paris.” Son nouveau film, un thriller français appelé Le Deuxième Souffle, la replongera dans ses racines.

NL » Een moederrol

Hoewel ze als een van de mooiste vrouwen ter wereld beschouwd wordt, kiest Monica Bellucci steeds weer voor rauwe en controversiële rollen in films zoals The Passion of the Christ, Irréversible en de nieuwkomer Shoot ‘Em Up. Hierin speelt ze een prostituee die borstvoeding geeft en er samen met een mysterieuze eenzaat (Clive Owen) alles aan doet om een pasgeboren weesje tegen een bende boeven te beschermen.

Maar waarom kiest ze als moeder (haar dochter Deva is drie jaar oud) voor zulke duistere rollen? ‘Omdat ik gek ben’, lacht ze. ‘Ik begrijp soms zelf niet waarom ik bepaalde rollen kies en andere niet. Misschien moet ik maar in therapie gaan!’

Bellucci omschrijft de geboorte van haar dochter als ‘het mooiste dat een vrouw kan overkomen’, maar vindt niet dat ze voor sprookjesrollen moet kiezen omdat ze moeder is. ‘Wat ik mijn dochter duidelijk moet maken is: ik ben misschien geen braaf meisje op het scherm, maar ik ben wel een goede moeder.’

Als Deva later besluit te gaan acteren, wordt ze de derde generatie die dat doet in de familie van haar vader. Bellucci is al acht jaar getrouwd met Vincent Cassel, de zoon van de overleden Franse acteur Jean-Pierre Cassel. Bellucci ziet Deva echter liever niet op de catwalk verschijnen, hoewel ze zelf 20 jaar lang een erg succesvol model was.

Bellucci geeft toe verbaasd te zijn dat Amerika zo dol is op haar: ‘Ik begrijp het niet goed, want ik ben een echte Europeaanse. Ik woon in Londen en Parijs.’ Haar nieuwe film, de Franse thriller Le Deuxième Souffle, zal haar terugvoeren naar haar roots.

Text Robin Lynch / Images Getty Images, Kobal Collection, Rex Features

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