Juliette Binochet is 40 today. Winner of the Oscar for best supporting actress in The English Patient and nominee for best actress in Chocolat, Miss Binochet was one of People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people in 1997. Her break-through role was as Tereza in the 1988 film The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has this story:
In 1990 she wrote to the president of France, Francois Mitterand, to ask him for funds for her film Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991). However he didn’t help. In 1993 Mitterand asked Binoche to dinner at the presidential palace in Paris. When asked by the press why he invited her, he said “I dreamt one night that I kissed her, now I hope she will be my mistress”. Binoche declined the invitation. Soon after they bumped into each other in a Paris market and had a long discussion about art, love, books and poetry.