Virginie Ledoyen: ten years after starring in The Beach

The morning we meet, Ledoyen is not wearing Chanel - which she adores - or anything glamorous for that matter. It is not yet lunchtime, and she is in standard French schoolgirl chic: jeans, a simple blue and white striped cotton shirt, no make-up. Underneath the V-neck of her blouse, her skin is the colour of caramel. She looks very young, younger than 32. She has a broad smile, expressive hands, and greenish-brown eyes. She laughs a lot. On one hand, she wears a simple silver ring, but she denies that she is married, even though the web is full of reports that she married a small-time film director called Iain Rogers in September 2007. Indeed she does not want to talk about any lovers, boyfriends, past or present, or even about the American father of her seven-yearold daughter Lilas, who goes to a local school.

But she is clearly proud of her daughter: she pulls out the BlackBerry again and shows a black and white photograph of mother and daughter, equally stunning, leaning against an old stone wall in Paris. In the photo, Ledoyen is wearing Chanel, which is the perfect Parisian trick: to look great in jeans and in couture.

When I mention how surprised I was to have seen Ledoyen pregnant, in a white dress at the Cannes Film Festival eight years ago, at the premiere of The Beach, her breakout film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, she laughs. 'Most actresses who just got discovered by Hollywood might have waited a little bit before having a baby,' I venture. She smiles broadly. 'Yes, I became a mother young. I was 24. But maybe because my mother had me young, I always wanted to have a baby. It was just obvious to me. And I wanted that baby so much, it was not even an issue.'

Ledoyen bounced back fast after the birth of Lilas, and returned to work with new energy. She either took Lilas with her on location, or managed to shoot in Paris. 'For the past year and a half, I have been lucky. I've been shooting here, which is great, as Lilas is in school now.' She does not find the strain of the two roles, mother and actress, schizophrenic. 'Life is interactive with your work,' she says wisely. 'They go together.'
Nearly a decade ago, Ledoyen was cast in The Beach as Françoise, the beautiful French girl who washes up in Thailand in a blue bikini. Everyone called her the new Bardot, a not very imaginative comparison. Aside from the dimples, they are very different. After the publicity of The Beach, Ledoyen might easily have been stuck in roles that required her to look great naked or nearly naked, but not to develop her skills as an actress. But Ledoyen is smarter than that. She is, to all who know her, tough, intelligent and thoughtful, and most importantly has made the difficult transition (like DiCaprio) from child star to sex bomb to serious actor.

French critics sometimes liken her to Isabelle Huppert, and see her as an actress who will be capable, as she gets older, of deep, intense characterisation. Ledoyen is flattered by that reference; she grew up watching Huppert, and 'actors like Marcello Mastroianni. Rather than taking lessons, I learned by watching.' Her models were Anna Karina, Gena Rowlands, Katharine Hepburn.

Ledoyen - born Virginie Fernandez; her paternal grandfather was Spanish - is the child of a 'modest' family who lived in the Paris suburbs. Her father sold cleaning products on a market stall, her mother worked in a restaurant, and she has a younger brother who works in film production. But working-class French families still go on skiing holidays and her childhood was not deprived. She once said, 'We did not live on bread and butter.'

She was two when she first went in front of a camera. 'My mother's friend had a child in photographs,' she says, sipping her tea. 'And one day they brought me along. It wasn't really a plan.' It was something she did not take seriously as a career. She worked in commercials and print before making her movie debut when she was ten in the French comedy Les Exploits d'un Jeune Don Juan. She attended the prestigious L'Ecole des Enfants du Spectacle, studying in the mornings, and singing, dancing and acting in the afternoons.

By the time she made Don Juan, she was beginning to get the acting bug. 'It's funny; I just did it like a hobby. Then I reached adolescence and people started asking: "What do you want to do with your life?" I thought maybe I wanted to be a lawyer. But I knew I could not do both. Both require a certain discipline. So I became an actress.'

At 16, she left home. She says she is someone who needs time alone. At 18, she made the Olivier Assayas film L'eau Froide, playing a troubled teenager. The film had a profound effect on her career: she was inspired by Assayas, with whom she went on to work again in Touts les Garçons et les Filles de Leur Age. Her first English language film was A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries with Merchant-Ivory, before Danny Boyle, director of Trainspotting and now Slumdog Millionaire, put out a call for a French actress.

That was for The Beach, one of the most hyped films of the time, based on the Alex Garland novel. Ledoyen was 22 when filming started in Thailand for four months 'under the sun on Phuket and Phi Phi Island'. The film was logistically tricky to make: ecologists were furious; fans of the book said Boyle did not stick to the plot. But it was fun to watch, there were great locations, and Virginie looked fantastic in a bikini.

Ten years on, she has nothing but praise for DiCaprio ('a real cinephile, a very talented actor'), with whom she had a solidly professional relationship. 'He is what I would call a great actor,' she says. 'Intense, emotional, intelligent.' She is grateful for the experience of working with Boyle, and points out that while the film was promoted as a Hollywood movie, it was really a British one. 'Danny is British and the crew was British. And Danny is great. He's a smart man, but he is more than that,' she says. 'He has an interesting universe around him.'

After The Beach, Virginie was offered a lot of starlet roles but she chose a more intellectual path. She worked with Claude Chabrol and Pierre Jolivet. She made a television film, with Gérard Depardieu and John Malkovich, of Les Misérables. She sang for the French director François Ozon in the camp but wonderful 8 Women (alongside Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant and Emmanuelle Béart). And she appeared as one of the faces of L'Oréal, a role that, she says, 'gave me financial freedom'.

Her next film is L'armée du Crime, directed by Robert Guédiguian, about the French Resistance, a role Ledoyen researched by talking to Resistance fighters and reading books. 'The Resistance was a painful part of French history, and it is important to get it right,' she says gravely of her preparation. As for going deep into roles emotionally, she says, 'If the character calls for it, you just do it.'

Other than the fact that she is a film star and radiates beauty, Ledoyen seems pretty ordinary. She dresses like any other 14th-arrondissement mother about to pick up her child from school. She lives in a normal Parisian neighbourhood, she goes to the local cinemas, she reads a lot - in English. When she is not working, she likes to be in the rugged part of Atlantic France beloved by hippies and surfers. She walks on the deserted beaches and swims in the cold sea. Or else she just 'takes care of my daughter'. When that happens, she is not Virginie Ledoyen, starlet turned serious actress, she is just 'Maman'. 'We just hang around,' she says. 'Going to movies, exhibitions, the libraries.' She grins. 'Just fun stuff.'

Hair by Isabelle Luzet at B Agency. Make-up by Phophie Mathias at Airport Agency. Fashion assistant: Orsolya Szabo

ES travelled with Eurostar. Eurostar operates up to 20 daily services from London St Pancras International to Paris. Return standard fare from £59 (08705 186186; eurostar.com). Fastest London to Paris journey time is 2 hours 15 minutes.