At the age of 28, the shy Irène Jacob has been successfully playing "complex" parts on screen.

To the French magazine Sudio, she is "beautiful and emotional". The American Variety described her as "a magnetic, instinctive woman." And so on. It was under this praise hailstorm that Irène Jacob won the best actress award at Cannes '91, when she was 25, due to her double character in Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Double life of Veronique. Three years and two films later, she lights the screen again, this time with more intensity, in the drama Red , the third part of Kieslowski's trilogy inspired by the colours of the French flag. The re-union of the Kieslowski-Jacob partnership made eveyone suspect that he finally found her muse - and moulded her to European cinema. "He is a very sensible person, he knows exactly what he wants from an actor", defines the shy and cheerful Jacob, by phone, from Berlin, to JORNAL DO BRASIL.

Irène is presently in Berlin filming Victory, in which she shares the screen with American actor Willem Dafoe and the Australian Sam Neill. The movie tells the story of a young musician that decides to live with her beloved (Dafoe) on an island. "It's a complex story about human feelings", says the star.

Since Irène's career was crossed by Kieslowski's, her curriculum became full of "complex" characters. As in The Double Life of Veronique she played two identical women, Veronique and Veronika, in Red she is Valentine, a young student with affective, social and familiar problems. "Both characters are in search of something they don't know what it is. They have a strong intuition, and they hold the feeling that they need to do the right thing, and that they have to run the risk of accepting these feelings. In addition to that, both Veronique and Valentine realize that being alone isn't enough, they need someone. This really sounds like Kieslowski", tells the actress.

Before she had finally been revealed to the world in The Double Life of Veronique, Irène has only done some movies and plays. Ten years ago, she came from Switzerland to Paris to study Dramatic Art. She was very young then and she didn't know what was waitng for her. "I knew that an acting career would involve a lot of difficulties and risks. But I was more concentrated in my profession, and in which parts I would like to play or not", she remembers.

For years, Irène took small parts in films like Louis Malle's Au Revoir Les Enfants (her debut), Jacques Rivette's La Bande Des Quatre and Samy Pavel's La Passion De Van Gogh as well as in theatre plays in Paris and France inland. She played, for example, Moliere's The Misantrope, in Paris. "I don't know if I'm a lucky person. What can I say is that I had the luck of working in good films and with good people. It all depends on the persons you meet through your life. And I've met the right ones. In my profession, you never do anything on your own. Kieslowski offered me Veronique, I accepted it, and here I am", she celebrates.

After Victory, she will meet Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders, with whom she'll do the movie "Beyond the Clouds", a script based on four short stories by the Italian director. This rhythm of work limits Irène's friendships and affective relationships. "Most of my friends are from the time I used to go to the School of Drama, and it restricts my affective life to the artistic environment", she confesses, but avoiding talking about any love affair.

She intends to go on working, no matter who's behind the camera. "People love asking me whom I would like to work with. This is difficult to answer. The important thing is that I only accept parts that really seem interesting to me. And, if I could, I would like to work in a musical film".