It’s odd to see Juliette Binoche stomping away on a treadmill, breathing heavily, even — yikes — sweating.
It’s not that French women shouldn’t exercise, but Binoche is best known for her serious roles in films such as “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and “The English Patient.”
Yet there she is in the new comedy “Dan in Real Life,” puffing away as she works out, playing one of a million American women marching along on her treadmill. In the film opening Friday, funnyman Steve Carell plays a widower who inadvertently falls for his brother’s girlfriend (Binoche).
A yen for new experience is partly why she has ended up in a mainstream comedy, in a part more typically played by the Jennifer Anistons and Drew Barrymores. In real life, not every person wants the girl next door. But in Hollywood, that is what’s considered the most salable.
“You don’t expect Juliette Binoche to be playing opposite Steve Carell. A number of people questioned what I was thinking,” says writer/director Steve Hedges. “But she’s the kind of person that you could imagine doing all sorts of unspeakable things to get a chance to be with.”
Binoche was one of the first people to whom Hedges had sent the script. She chooses her projects strictly by director, had liked Hedges’ little indie “Pieces of April” — and “felt the world needed more laughter,” Hedges recalls her saying.
In retrospect, he adds, “I realized that person I met at dinner was the person I was hoping to see on film. She’s delightful, funny, open, smart. I didn’t know how to explain that she didn’t need to do much acting.”
Binoche usually prepares intensely for her parts, and this was no exception. She worked with her acting coach, Susan Batson, and dove headfirst into all things American, working out for months. (Her character meets her initial boyfriend in a gym.)
“I loved it. I learned all the games,” Binoche says. “I did the aerobics stuff and tried to understand how the rules of the American football work.”
Making “Dan in Real Life” was much different than her other film projects.
“It’s like a lesson on how to make a movie,” she says. A Hollywood movie. “Part 1, you do a wide shot, then you do a person-to-person and change angles. You cover.”
It’s hard to tell if she found covering to be totally satisfying artistically.
“It’s disarming how honest she can be,” Hedges says with a laugh. “She’ll always tell you the truth, and some days that’s hard because her truth can be, ‘You’re not doing your job.’ “
Binoche found Hedges to be a “very sensitive man.” He listened, he tried to understand what she thought. But in the end, there were moments when she wished her character was allowed to be — she trails off, stumbling for the right word — “… a little bit more angry, upset.”
But in Hollywood, the perfect woman always must be the perfect woman, even when she’s Juliette Binoche. Says La Binoche, as they call her in France, “I think he tried to smooth it somehow.”
