Atlantica - 01.03.2002, Qupperneq 19

A T L A N T I C A 17
Hélène is bored. For the past two months,
Hélène de Fougerolles has been filming
on location in Neskaupstadur, a remote
settlement tucked away in Iceland’s moun-
tainous East Fjords. Here the winters are
long, windy and brutally cold.
Oh, how times have changed. Two
years ago, this beautiful French actress
(who resides in Paris) was sunning herself
on a tropical island in Thailand with
Leonardo DiCaprio and crew for her up-
coming role in The Beach. Nobody’s get-
ting tan in Neskaupstadur. Heck, the sun
won’t even show itself until February,
when it finally inches above the moun-
tains circumscribing this town. Speaking
of darkness, there will only be four hours
of daylight today.
“I’m not used to not having the day,”
de Fougerolles says, as she slowly twirls
in circles, careful not to slip on the ice that
coats the parking lot. At the moment,
we’re standing outside the soundstage –
an old warehouse – waiting for a key to be
gophered to us so de Fougerolles can go
inside and change into wardrobe for a
photo shoot. “There’s so much nothing to
do here,” the sexy starlet laments, a warm
mist fuming from her mouth.
Neskaupstadur is about as Podunk as
they come. A new home hasn’t been con-
structed in the community for over ten
years. There’s no movie theatre. There are
only two bars, one gas station, a small
shop the locals call a video store, a fish
factory and that’s about it. Even the heat-
ed pool – the saving grace of small
Icelandic towns – is closed down, current-
ly undergoing a facelift. In other words,
there’s not a whole heck of a lot going on
here.
“I’ve been here for two months, but it
feels more like two years,” de Fougerolles
insists. “I’ve read six books since October.
I only have one book left so now I have to
pace myself, otherwise I’ll have nothing
else to do.”
One of those books, she tells me, was
about Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II. De
Fougerolles must truly be bored.
ICELAND CALLING
After the photo shoot I catch up with de
Fougerolles back at Hotel Capitano (now
referred to by locals as “Hollywood”), a
quaint guest house that the film crew has
taken over since shooting began in
October. De Fougerolles has removed her
heavy black overcoat and changed out of
her character’s baggy ensemble into a
grey turtle neck and black trousers that
accentuate her petite figure. Her long,
sandy-blonde hair is pulled back revealing
delicate facial features; a sexy mole just
above her upper lip catches the eye.
De Fougerolles is buttering two slices
of bread, a supplement to a breakfast of
kiwi fruit and segments of orange that was
cut short by the photo shoot. In front of
her is a cup of coffee the size of a soup
bowl. Must be a French thing. Stirring her
bowl o’caffeine, she appears grateful for
the interview, a brief diversion from the
ennui that Neskaupstadur evokes.
“It’s so nice to talk to someone who
speaks an English that I can really under-
stand,” she says, commenting on the diffi-
culty she has had deciphering the accents
of the Icelandic crew.
So how did this sexy actress find her
way from Paris to Neskaupstadur?
De Fougerolles is by no means famous.
If you saw The Beach, chances are you
didn’t even notice her role as a “glamor-
ised extra that had no responsibilities
except for staying tan, swimming in the
turquoise water and playing cards”.
Nonetheless, this friendly 29-year-old
actress stays busy, mostly appearing in
French films you’ve probably never seen.
She just wrapped shooting on Le Raid (The
Raid), an action-comedy filmed in Canada,
Venezuela and Paris. She recently appeared
in Va Savoir (Who Knows), a comedy
directed by Jacques Rivette. However, if
you were one of the few movie-goers who
sat through The Fall, a thriller starring Craig
Sheffer, you will recognise her as ‘Marta
Kiss’, the blonde waif on the run from a for-
mer Communist hardliner in Budapest.
“It was very important for me to be an
extra on The Beach because I was doing
NOTHING at the time in France. When I
came back, I don’t know if it was the pub-
licity, but I began getting [a lot of offers]. I
don’t think I would accept being an extra
again. Now, it’s okay for me in France. We
will see in six months or one year how I
am,” she says, laughing at herself and the
instability of her chosen profession. “It’s
always about what you are doing at this
moment.”
At the moment, she’s working on
Baltasar Kormákur’s (101 Reykjavík) latest
film, Hafid (The Sea), a dark story about a
airmail
With fond memories of her sun-filled adventure filming The Beach still fresh in her mind, actress Hélène de
Fougerolles now finds herself on location in a rural fishing village in Iceland’s rugged East Fjords. And it’s
the middle of a dark, snowy winter. Edward Weinman catches up with the sexy French starlet on the set of
her latest film.
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