ON Sunday, at the Oscars, host Jimmy Kimmel addressed Isabelle Huppert, one of the five nominees for Best Actress, up for her mesmerizing performance in Elle. “On behalf of everyone here, we didn’t see Elle but we absolutely loved it.” He is joking, of course – a subtle dig at America’s lack of interest in subtitled movies. But the very fact Huppert, at 63, has finally been nominated for an Academy Award, after a career stretching back over forty-five years, is something to be celebrated.

Already winning Best Actress for Elle at the Golden Globes (her first nomination) and the French César awards (her sixteenth nomination, second win), Huppert has only occasionally flirted with U.S. cinema, indies like Amateur and I Heart Huckabees. It is Europe where she remains the queen of cinema – winning two Best Actress awards at the Cannes Film Festival, for Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher and Claude Chabrol’s Violette.

Now there is Elle – a French film by a Dutch director that was originally intended to be an American movie. Based on Philippe Djian’s novel, it’s Huppert’s first collaboration with Paul Verhoeven, famed for his controversial Hollywood outings Basic Instinct and Showgirls. “I met him in Los Angeles, a very long time ago,” remembers Huppert. “We had dinner with several people and I thought he was very intimidating, because for me, he was the director of RoboCop and Starship Troopers.”

It’s almost bizarre to think that Huppert – the icy-cool, highly intelligent doyenne of French cinema could be intimidated. Still, the situation was reversed when it came to Elle. Huppert was already attached, but left in the cold when Verhoeven tried and then failed to make the movie in America. “On our knees, we went to Isabelle’s house,” recalls Verhoeven, “and said, ‘Sorry, this adventure in the United States didn’t work so well. Do you want to do it still?’”

Thankfully, Huppert held no ill will. She plays Michèle Leblanc, a CEO at a video games’ company who is viciously assaulted and raped in her own home. But, after dusting herself down, she discovers the identity of her attacker – and turns the tables. Neither a comedy about rape, as some were expecting with Verhoeven’s track record, nor a story of vengeance, the end result is far more disturbing.

Utilizing Huppert’s own persona as a portrayer of cold-blooded characters, gradually, the onion-layers are peeled back as we learn that Michèle is the daughter of a 1970s serial killer, a fact that naturally coloured her entire existence. “The movie says so many things about violence,” says Huppert. “Of course rape is the centre-point of that violence, but [there is] family violence…the movie is very rich and complex.”

Exploring the fine line between abuse and arousal too, Elle is a probing psychological portrait. “The other day, I had this reaction from a friend of mine,” recounts Huppert. “She came to see it and she said, ‘The film is really touching.’ And that was not something I expected to be said, but that’s what I think too – the film is touching. You have this fearless solitary woman, and there is something touching about her life – how she’s fearless, alone.”

The result, you might say, is a film that’s both pure Verhoeven and pure Huppert. It’s an alchemy that has clearly intrigued Hollywood (despite the fact it’s a story too risky for studios to produce). “There is something international in the film,” concedes Huppert. “Not specifically French, I would say. But there is a sense of provocation, a great sense of irony, a certain amorality…that could be French. But American in the speed, in the veracity…”

What it’s not is a provocation, says the actress, “I never felt I was being provocative, not for the sake of it. I don’t think films are made to reproduce reality. Films are made to explore people’s fantasies, to explore things you wouldn’t confess as a normal human being. That’s what creativity is made for. Sometimes, I’m a little surprised that how people keep questioning this. What are we talking about? Amorality is not necessarily something you get away from.”

Huppert, who was raised in Paris as the daughter of Annick, an English teacher, and Raymond, a safe manufacturer, says her drive to act is the same as it ever was. “You spend time with Paul Verhoeven, then you spend some time with Michael Haneke, then [Krzysztof] Warlikowski [who directed her on stage at the Barbican last year in the experimental Phaedra(s)]…so it’s all about these kinds of human relationships. It makes it very exciting.”

She recently reunited Haneke for a fourth time on Happy End, an “x-ray of a family” set to the backdrop of the Calais refugee crisis that will almost certainly premiere in Cannes this May. Beyond this, she has Barrage – playing mother to Lolita Chammah, her real-life daughter with husband Roland Chammah. “She’s a wonderful actress,” she says. The same can be said for Huppert, of course – something even Hollywood has finally woken up to.

Elle opens on March 10th.