Josephine de La Baume interview: On FrightFest thriller Road Games and The Hitman’s Bodyguard

‘If people want to escape... they can’t just go and watch comedies all the time. They like to escape in different ways, even if there’s a bit of violence.’

The actress speaks openly about the horrors France has witnessed this year (Getty)

“This interview is taking a very weird turn!” says Joséphine de La Baume, the ultra-chic French actress, singer and model. Perhaps it’s apt, given we’re here to talk about Road Games – a twisty Anglo-Gallic thriller that receives its UK premiere this week at London’s ever-popular genre gathering FrightFest. But in fact her remark comes when we chance upon the tragic events in France over the past year.

“Technically” based in London – where De La Baume lives with her music producer husband Mark Ronson – she’s been in Paris for the past year, working, and was in the city last November when Isis brutally took the lives of 130 people, including 89 at the Bataclan theatre. “I’ve lost friends,” she says, quietly. “I was in a music venue myself during the terrorist attacks, which was evacuated. It was pretty scary.”

De La Baume, 32, suddenly feels the urge to talk about the way her French countrymen and women have dealt with the horrors of the last year, most recently with the Bastille Day attacks on Nice. “I was very impressed that people... refuse to be afraid,” she says, pausing for thought. “People are sitting in cafes and refusing to change their way of living, which I think is a beautiful thing.”

The same goes for movies; even violent ones like Road Games have a place in times of such distress. “In this case, it’s a completely fictional movie,” she says. “It’s a thriller and it doesn’t have any link to what’s going on in France. If people want to escape... they can’t just go and watch comedies all the time. They like to escape in different ways, even if there’s a bit of violence.”

While it doesn’t touch 2006’s Vincent Cassel movie Sheitan for bizarre goings-on in rural Gaul, Road Games is a keep-you-guessing thriller liable to put you off hitchhiking for life. De La Baume’s Véronique and Andrew Simpson’s British drifter Jack meet on the road and are forced to take shelter in the creaky old mansion shared by a mysterious married couple (Frederic Pierrot, Barbara Crampton).

“The director wanted to show what it feels like when you’re a foreigner not speaking the language of a country that you’re in, feeling a bit lost,” says de La Baume, who comes in at the softer end of the FrightFest demographic. “I like thrillers but I never watch horror movies. I’m absolutely terrified. They really haunt me for a long time, so I try to avoid them.”

Rather echoing the film’s mix of English and French dialogue, De La Baume’s career has dipped in and out of both film industries – bouncing between veteran Gallic helmer Bertrand Tavernier’s period drama The Princess of Montpensier and the Rowan Atkinson espionage comedy Johnny English Reborn and Julian Fellowes mini-series Titanic. “You can’t get more English. Julian Fellowes and Rowan Atkinson,” she chuckles. “It’s almost like Marmite.”

De La Baume grew up with English culture – “watching Fawlty Towers and Mr. Bean” – because her grandmother lived over here. “It’s always something I’ve felt very close to,” she says. Raised in Paris, her father is a former investment banker who now writes about theatre, while her mother runs a charity (her grandfather, Grégoire Salmanowitz, owned the world’s largest freight-inspection company SGS).

“My parents were very cultured and were both intellectuals,” she explains. “But movies... they’re not movie buffs. They’re more book buffs. And music – they listen to classical music. I would say, the movies and music I like came more from me. I grew up in a very intellectual and interesting environment, but I don’t think that made me inclined to do this – I think it just came from me.”

Music is right up there on De La Baume’s to-do list. She and her younger brother Alexandre formed a band called SingTank. “It was a way of hanging out and spending time together,” she notes, but after releasing two albums (the first with help from British producer Nellee Hooper) it’s all changed. “I’m writing new songs with my brother still, but it will be a different band,” she says. “This time, I’m more involved musically and it’s quite different music.”

Whether she will collaborate with her husband Ronson, the Grammy-winning musician/producer who’s worked with Adele and Amy Winehouse, is another matter. “If the song makes sense, then sure,” she shrugs. “I’m not against it. Right now, I want it to be quite low-fi. I don’t know whether that would work together... I’m sure he knows how to do a low-key production, but I’m just in the beginning of the writing.”

Marrying back in 2011, De La Baume and Ronson are certainly one of the cooler celebrity couples on the block – though it’s clear she doesn’t want to be known for this. Likewise, despite a campaign for lingerie retailer Agent Provocateur, she’s quick to dismiss modelling as a major part of her arsenal. “I’m not really a model. I’m quite short and quite curvy.” True, at 5ft 6in, she’s no catwalk queen but even a swift glance at her Instagram account shows just how photogenic she is.

Still, De La Baume clearly has an artistic itch she needs to scratch. Having written and directed a short in 2014, she’s now scripting her feature debut – “a true story about a woman I met ten years ago on a bridge in Paris” – with Sylvie Verheyde, who directed her and Pete Doherty in 2012’s period tale Confessions of a Child of the Century. “You just have to go with the flow with what’s happening with your life and what that leads you towards creatively,” she says, an air of mystery in her voice.

Acting-wise, she’s just completed a small role in The Hitman’s Bodyguard, an American thriller with Ryan Reynolds, and Madame, playing a French teacher opposite the “charming” Harvey Keitel. Then there’s The First, in which she’ll play the “completely wild” silent movie star Elsie Janis. “A lot of people say ‘They love acting, because they can forget about themselves.’ I actually feel the opposite,” she adds. “I feel like in every part I get to meet myself in a different way.”

Road Games plays at London’s FrightFest at 1.35pm on 26 August. It will be available to buy on DVD from 29 August