With a streak of blue in her blonde hair and a silver electric guitar pendant teamed with a flower print dress and sneakers, Emmanuelle Seigner has an air of rock chick meets easy femininity as she sits down to talk to journalists in the Taormina Film Festival.

The French actress is one of the guests of honor at the Italian film festival this year where she will be feted with an achievement award on Friday evening.

The electric guitar pendant is a nod to L’Epée, Seigner’s rock band with American music artist Anton Newcombe and husband-and-wife duo Marie and Lionel Limiñanas.

Asked about the band’s choice of name, which means sword in English, Seigner replies, drawing a finger across her neck: “Because the sword is used to ennoble (to knight) and to cut the throat”.

She goes on to reveal proudly that the band – for which she is also the lyrics writer – has had tracks featured in Emily in Paris as well as Killing Eve.

“What I like about it is that nobody knows it’s me so when we tour people ask me, ‘Are you L’Epée… I like to be unknown,” she says.

Granddaughter of acclaimed late Comédie-Française actor Louis Seigner, the actress has acting in her blood.  

After growing up in theater and a stint as a model, she got her first significant big screen break in Jean-Luc Godard’s Detective in 1985, followed by Roman Polanski’s psychological thriller Frantic opposite Harrison Ford in 1988.

“My grandfather was kind of a French Laurence Olivier. He was with the Comédie Française for 40 years. I was raised in theatre. I was a model at the beginning, and then I met Godard in a hotel, and he asked me to be in his movie and that’s how I started,” she said.

The experience was not an easy one for Seigner who played a character called the Princess of the Bahamas.

“He was always changing everything, but it was fun. There are worse things in life,” she says.

Frantic changed her life. As well as putting her on the map as an actress internationally,  she also married Polanski in 1989.

Seigner has since appeared in half a dozen of Polanski’s films spanning Bitter Moon (1992), The Ninth Gate (1999), Venus in Fur (2013), Based On A True Story (2017) and An Officer and a Spy (2019), while also working with the likes of Claude Miller (The Smile), Olivier Dahan (La Vie en Rose), Mario Monicelli (Dark Illness), Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, At Eternity’s Gate), Gabriele Salvatores (Nirvana), Giovanni Veronesi (Witches to the North) and Dario Argento (Giallo) among others.

In recent years, however, her public persona has been engulfed in the controversy around a historic rape charge in the U.S. against Polanski involving then teenager Samantha Geimer, as well as multiple allegations of sexual misconduct in France, all of which he has denied.

Seigner has remained loyal to her husband of more than 35-years throughout the period, which has seen him kicked out of the The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and effectively made persona non grata at France’s César Academy.

Seigner even connected with Geimer in 2023 for an interview in France’s Le Point magazine in which the latter denied that she was a victim and that she had long forgiven Polanski.

Geimer’s memoir The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski, focusing on the how the furore around the case, rather than the assault itself, has impacted her life, is currently being adapted to the big screen, with César–nominated French filmmaker Marina Ziolkowski directing.

Seigner shuts down any discussion of that film or Polanski in the Taormina roundtable, saying politely but firmly: “ I don’t want to talk about that. It’s not my story.”

Pushed on whether, like Geimer, her life has been impacted by events beyond her control, and how she deals with the fallout, Seigner simply reaffirms her commitment to Polanski.

“I’m loyal to him because he’s been a very good husband and a very good father and a very good man,” she says.

Seigner does not rule out working again with her husband, who turns 93 in August, but her response implies nothing is on the boil.

“Who knows, maybe, he’s one of the greatest directors in the world,” she says on a possible collaboration.

In the meantime, she is busy with a raft of other projects including a new L’Epée album, and three feature films in France, Italy and the U.S. in the pipeline, the details of which she is keeping under wraps.

Her last feature film credit was Olmo Schnabel’s New York-set Pet Shop Days alongside Willem Dafoe, which had a limited release after debuting in Venice in 2023.

“I have a working visa, and I love working there and I love American people. I love working with American directors,” she says.

She also appeared in play Bungalow 51, starring as Marilyn Monroe opposite her sister Mathilde Seigner as Simone Signoret. The work is inspired by an infamous incident in which Signoret’s husband Yves Montand cheated on her with Monroe while shooting Let’s Make Love in Hollywood in 1960.

Alongside her own plans, Seigner also talks proudly about her oldest daughter Morgane Polanski, who has accompanied her to Taormina. The actress and filmmaker is preparing her first feature film, a horror movie, in the UK, where she has lived since studying at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

“She has done three shorts,” said Seigner, adding her daughter had asked her to read the first draft of the screenplay and is now pestering her to read the final version.  “She’s got a very good eye… since she was a child she was doing shows and directing plays. I think it’s something you have in you.”

Looking back at her life and career as receives an achievement award in Taormina, Seigner said she had few regrets bar one.

“Maybe I would be a more careerist, I was not career minded. I really didn’t care… maybe if I was 20 again, I would be more ambitious… I guess I was lucky, but I was never ambitious. Now, I’m more ambitious, but it’s a bit too late… I can pray.”

Get our Breaking News Alerts and Keep your inbox happy.

Comments On Deadline Hollywood are monitored. So don't go off topic, don't impersonate anyone, and don't get your facts wrong.

Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() );