Sometimes you get what you expect and a lot more on top. In a lonely corner of a quiet Parisian brasserie, Irene Jacob, young, beautiful and intelligent French actress of the rapidly ascendant kind, is considering existentialism, Greek philosophy and - of course - the precise meaning of human existence.

"It was Plato who said that in life, finally, we have only 11 stories to live," ruminates Irene in the kind of precise but smoulderingly childlike tones that have made her big-screen appearances so enchanting. "You know I think Plato was right: it is true that there's not much more than a few roles for us to live out."

Irene is busy discussing, nay defending, the kind of roles she has played in her idiosyncratic but productive film career - a career that has gathered both plaudits and some healthy movieworld momentum on the back of the international film festival circuit and, in particular, the twin successes of Irene's work with director Krzysztof Kieslowski, The Double Life of Veronique and Three Colours Red .

Crassly summarized, the Irene movie role goes something like this: strong, bright, able young woman is living life alone and, outwardly, seems happy to do so. Many in the cinema audience warm immediately to the character's inependent streak, not to mention her chic Parisian style. But wait, for there is more here than meets the eye. What is this turmoil, this soul searching, that lies behind the polished exterior? Why is there malaise, madness even, where there should be tidy, modern-day contentment? The Irene role is never an exercise in over-the-top, crazy method acting, but we, the audience, do come to realize one thing: there is some sort of craziness going on here if we bother to scrape beneath the surface of this character's situation.

Something of this sort crops up in Irene's latest film release, All Men Are Mortal, a cinematic interpretation of a Simone De Beauvoir novel. Playing the starring role of Regina, a famous actress living in Paris immediately after the Second World War, Irene's character meets a man in the street who is looking at the sky and apparently has nothing. Nothing, that is, except for the fact that he is immortal.

"She, of course, thinks this is amazing," explains Irene. "What a thing to be! Such a chance for her, because she would love this for herself. But he is pessimistic because he has lost too many loves, seen too many sons die. It is a fantastic story because you have to imagine immortality for yourself. For me, the movie actually ignores some of the deeper themes of the book to focus a little too much on these two people meeting after the war. A theatrical tale. But the deeper story is that this man who lives forever ultimately has feelings that are mortal.

"If you ask, 'Is my character a crazy character?', then it depends on your idea of what craziness is. It was exactly the same with my character in Three Colours Red. This young woman stops for an old man who is hard with her and who provokes her. But why does she go back to him? This is a crazy thing to do and this is a part of all of us, the craziness we all have. That is what I find truly interesting in a film role."

The film roles - Hollywood parts and all - are now arriving on Irene's doorstop in a steady stream following the acclaim surrounding Red , although she will confess she's well aware of the perils of choosing too similar parts every time. "I know there's a danger I will start using those little tricks, those little smiles and wrinkles of the face, every time. That would be the end of it, for me. So I'm trying to take different types of part with very different directors who I hope will see different parts of me each time."

The new year, therefore, will see the start of a new phase in the Irene Jacob ouevre. First, there's her part as Desdemona in Othello alongside Laurence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh (opening in the UK in February) and then she stars with Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill and the young British actor Rufus Sewell in an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Victory. Highbrow respectability, for sure, but with an increasingly big-budget backing.

So, Shakepeare's tragic heroine Desdemona: strong, independent, beautiful, young woman from a privileged background who suddenly shuns society to fall in love with a black warrior and run off to war with him? What's the story, Irene? "Well, she is a strong woman who isn't crazy at all and yet she is crazy underneath," grins Irene. "I mean, to have that courage - you'd have to be crazy in a way, wouldn't you?"

And then there's Irene's upcoming role in the Michelangelo Antonioni/Wim Wenders collaboration Beyond the Clouds, a film in four parts focusing on impossible love. A good-looking, smart, seductive man (Vincent Perez) meets a young, bright, beautiful woman in the street and guess what? The woman (Jacob) cannot fall for him because - dah, dah, dah - there's a hidden side to her. A secret passion that from the outside the cinema audience cannot initially guess at.

Perhaps these sort of roles - the Irene factor, if you like - are the inevitable result of a very Continental dual-nationality. The daughter of a physicist, Irene was born on the outskirts of Paris, but spent the years of three to 18 growing up in Geneva, before moving back to her beloved French "cinemas and cafés". One part pacific, dependable Swiss and another passionate, smouldering Parisian, can Irene Jacob ever escape herself?

"You know, it is true my hair is not bright blue and the women I play don't have blue hair either. But my feeling about this is that it doesn't matter whether you spend your whole life living in a cave in the mountains or sat drinking in a bar in the middle of the city. What is interesting, what really counts, is how committed you are to what you want to see and do."

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