Juliette Binoche puts the spotlight on human rights

Actor, poet, painter, dancer: These are all real-life roles that Juliette Binoche has performed with varying degrees of success or, at least, recognition. But this year, it is as a human rights campaigner that the 46-year-old Oscar-winning star of The English Patient has drawn most headlines.

Recently, hers was one of the celebrity names attached to the international appeal to halt the stoning to death of Mohammadi Ashtiani, the 43-year-old Iranian mother found guilty of adultery. Ashtiani had been lashed 99 times and held in prison for five years after confessing under torture to having affairs with two men.

Glamour for a cause

Binoche was not the only actor to defend Ashtiani (Emma Thompson, Colin Firth and Robert de Niro also put their names to the campaign) but she was probably the one from whom the authorities in Iran least wanted to hear. As things stand, the woman who made her name in films such as The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Chocolat looks unlikely to be receiving any cards from the ayatollahs this Eid. Binoche has used her global renown to bring attention to the arbitrary and often barbaric justice system of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It started when she broke down during the press conference for a film by Abbas Kiarostami. What prompted her tears was the news that Kiarostami's countryman, friend and fellow filmmaker, the Iranian director Jafar Panahi had commenced a hunger strike in Evin prison in Tehran.

The scene was all the more powerful because Binoche has long had a reputation, particularly in France, for being aloof and rather unemotional. The daughter of two Parisian actor-directors, Binoche started out working for auteurs such as Jean-Luc Godard and over her long career, resisted the stereotypical romantic roles for which her exquisite features seemed to have been moulded.

Guarded thoughts

Nor has she been any easier to pin down beyond the screen. While it's known that she has a 10-year-old daughter by the French actor Benot Magimel and a son by a professional scuba diver and that she has had relationships with actors Daniel Day-Lewis and Olivier Martinez and directors Leos Carax and Santiago Amigorena, Binoche is quite guarded about her private life and often conceals her thoughts behind generalities.

Binoche had met Panahi, a leading light of the Iranian new wave, in Iran. He was imprisoned, along with his wife, daughter and friends, apparently because he had been planning to make a film about the Green Revolution, the reformist movement opposed to the repressive theocratic junta that runs Iran. It's thought that Binoche's close working relationship with Kiarostami had led her to take a personal interest in his homeland.

"Iran is very special," said Binoche, during Cannes. "We're closer than we think. We think of Iranian women as the property of men, chained up in the kitchen. But they know all about films and books and music."

She expressed her sympathies with Iranians, and specifically Panahi, when she went up to collect her Best Actress award at Cannes, wearing a strapless white dress and a sign bearing the imprisoned director's name. Shortly afterwards, Panahi was released by the Iranian authorities and many observers, particularly in France, attributed the decision in part to Binoche's actions.

Binoche was keen to play down the political significance of her intervention. Instead, she preferred to highlight the humanitarian and the artistic merits of speaking out. "We need artists and intellectuals to have different views on our lives," she said, "because they can influence the way we think."

A step forward

After the international publicity that Binoche helped generate and the condemnation of Iran for its cruel punishment of women, the Iranian authorities changed Ashtiani's death sentence from stoning to hanging. In an effort to cover its tracks, the regime then terrorised Ashtiani's lawyer into exile and broadcast a murder confession by Ashtiani, almost certainly secured through torture.

Responding to this, Binoche put her name to a letter by Bernard-Henri Levy, in which the French philosopher and activist accused the Iranians of "blatantly lying", called for Ashtiani's immediate release and argued that her case was symbolic of the "freedom and dignity of thousands of others".