Cesar Award-winning actress Pham Linh Dan is currently filming a Vietnamese feature in the ancient town of Hoi An.

A famed French actress, Vietnamese at heart, is choosy, but not about money.

“I liked the script and my character so much, and wished to have a chance to work with Bui Thac Chuyen after watching his film Song trong so hai (Living in Fear).

“I took on the role though my earnings from this film cannot compare to what is made abroad,” Dan said, adding she always places good scripts and passion above earnings.

Choi voi (Without an Anchor), directed by Bui Thac Chuyen, was originally titled Tan cung la bien (The Sea is the End) and then Di mai roi cung quay ve (Coming Back Finally).

The film revolves around intertwining, passionate yet uncanny romances between characters, including a lesbian relationship between Cam and her girlfriend, Duyen.

They are torn between their emotions and fluctuate between extremes of lust, happiness and torment.

Dan plays Cam, a writer who is a complicated psychological character and is tormented by her suppressed love for Duyen.

“The difficulty is how to portray all the intricate psychological twists,” Dan said.

The film, which started shooting late last month, is slated for release next September.

Acting compendium

Dan was born in 1974 in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City today), and moved to France with her parents a year later.

Dan in scenes of Oscar-winning Indochine (Indochina), her breakthrough debut feature. The other actress in the fist still is Catherine Deneuve.

Her big break came in 1992 when she starred in Indochine, a French-Vietnamese production which won the Academy and Golden Globe awards for the Best Foreign Language Film.

The film, directed by Regis Wargnier, tells about Eliane Devries (played by Catherine Deneuve), a seemingly repressed owner of a prosperous rubber plantation.

Her steely exterior, however, is only a mask to conceal her ardent love affairs within the upper-class society in French-ruled Vietnam.

But when Camille, her adopted Indochinese daughter, played by Dan, innocently falls in love with her secret lover, the scandalous lovers’ triangle threatens to ruin their entire family.

Dan’s role earned her a nomination for the Best Female Newcomer award at the Academy of Arts and Sciences Cesar Awards in 1993.

After starring in her second film, Jamila in 1994, Dan decided to opt out of films for a while, studying commerce at university and working as a senior marketing manager after graduation.

But with her passion for action undimmed, she took a four-year acting course at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York in 2001.

Dan marked her comeback to the silver screen in the film Les Mauvais Joueurs (Gamblers) in 2005.

The same year she was chosen to play the lead alongside French star Romain Duris in De battre mon coeur s’est arrete (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) directed by Jacques Audiard.

Her acting in the film won her the Best Newcomer award at the 31st Cesar Awards in 2006.

She returned to Vietnam last October to introduce the film Pars vite et reviens tard (Have Mercy on Us All), directed by Regis Wargnier and showcased at the “An Overview of French Movies” festival in Vietnam.

She recently starred in Le Bal des actrices (The Ball of the Actresses) and Mr. Nobody, her first English-speaking film, which are set to hit cinemas next year.

She has been on the jury at several international film festivals and film awards, including 2006 Deauville Asian Festival and the 2006 Lumiere Awards.

“My parents think acting is short-lived and unsuitable for a woman,” Dan said.

“But it’s never ceases to be my obsession, as it opens up new worlds for me and allows me to be the person I like. So I came back.”

Winning the Cesar Awards vindicated her decision to return to the silver screen, she said.

Vietnamese at heart

After Choi Voi, Dan hopes to act in more Vietnamese films. She finds Vietnamese directors talented and the local industry is budding.

“I long to be part of my home country’s movie industry,” she said.

“I’m a Vietnamese at heart. My parents taught me to follow Vietnamese traditions. We cook Vietnamese cooking and speak our mother tongue at home.”

“In France, I often felt a hollowness in my mind and heart but could not identify what it was,” she said, adding as soon as she stepped foot in Vietnam, she realized what she had been always seeking was the atmosphere of a real home with her compatriots.

“Foreigners may not remember who I am through my films, but they will remember I’m a Vietnamese,” she said.

Reported by Dang Ngoc Khoa