PRESSES

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Hello (Grande-Bretagne, juillet 2002)

Patricia Kaas, the french singer talks for the first time about her relationship with Jeremy Irons.

Patricia Kaas, her pale-blue eyes glistening, would like everyone to know that she is not unhappy. Nor is she timid. Nor depressed. Nor lonely. And definitely not sad. "I'm not sad. I'm not sad. I'm not sad" she insists. "But I'm a human being. Sometimes, I wake up and the skies are grey and everything's horrible."
On the surface, there is little for her to be sad about. For Patricia Kaas, is a beautiful woman, with skin drawn tightly over crisp-edged bones that owe everything to her german mother. And inside this elegant, almost frail-looking 35-year-old is a voice that has made her rich and famous. She is a sultry french superstar, celebreted for singing like Edith Piaf and looking like Marlène Dietrich.

It's not a bad combination and it's helped shift many millions of records across the world. Few of them, perhaps, have ended up on the shelves of british or american shoppers - eternally sceptical of foreign talent. But they love her in Moscow. She goes down a storm in Hanoi. In Germany and Japan, her slinky aoutfits and capacity to belt out the hits have secured her a loyal following.

Above all, they adore her in France, where she is treasured as an endering talent to put the modish waifs of pop stardom to shame. She is often pigeonholed as the french Madonna. But through she shares Madonna's taste for hard work, she doesn't play the pop game and has no appetit for the celebrity life. She has woven herslef into the french cultural frabric discreetly but indelibly, much as did Charles Trenet, Georges Brassens or Jacques Brel. It would be no surprise if, half a century from now, her voice a few notches deeper, she was as much an icon as those greats.
For all that, she was virtually invisible on the british radar and till recently, when, quite by accident, she stirred things up very nicely. If you won't to attract attention in London, there can be few better ways of doing so than by grabbing one of britain's much-loved leading man - a married one, at that - and planting a distinctly French smacker on his lips outside a fashionnable nightspot.

In july last year, Jeremy Irons, then 52, who has been married to Sinéad Cusack for almost three decades, was on the receiving end of Kass's kisses. Suddenly, the rumours began to fly. Had Kaas, free and single, done the dirty on Mrs Irons and snatched away her husband ? After all, Kaas and Irons had been closeted away together for months in such romantic settings as Morocco and Paris, where they had been filming the forthcoming And Now... Ladies & Gentlemen, a romantic thriller about a jazz singer and a british jewel thief.
The film's director, Claude Lelouch, revealed that the pair had formed a "magical leading couple bond" during shooting of the film, which is a rare foray into acting for Kaas. "It's hypnotic, incredible", Lelouch said at the time. "At the end of 2 days with Patricia, Jeremy told me how impressed he was with her".
Then, just when the dust seemed to be settling on the episode, up popped Irons and Kaas in Cannes, when the film closed the Festival, hand in hand, they stepped across the famous red capret as camera shutters clicked like crazy. The chemistry seemed undeniable. Surely Patricia Kaas, one of the most reticent and scandal-free celebrities in France, a woman who, by her one admission, "doesn't like going out much", hadn't turned into a man-stealing predator ?
She sighs at the very thought of it and at the limitless and incomprehensible prurience of the british. "We just kissed each other", she says. "It was a kiss. When I read that we were supposed to having an affair, it made me laugh because I'm a single woman. But for Jeremy, it was a problem. He's a married man ; a man with commitments".
" It was the end of the filming and we had dinner, and we had a drink, but that was it. It happens every night in Paris. I kissed Claude Lelouch, too, but no one seemed interested in that."
For her, the biggest consequence of the episode is that she has lost a good friend. "It's a shame because I stayed in touch with Jeremy after afterwards and though I would love to call him when I am in London, so we coulmd go and have a bite to eat, I can't. The moment we sit down in a restaurant together, someone will take a photo and the whole scandal mill will be off again."
Indeed, Kaas hardly seems a very convincing man-stealer. Nervously wrapping her hands one around the other, the words spill out anxiously as she recalls her route to stardom.

Despite those chiselled features that seem so aristocratic, Kaas grew up in a poor family with six sisters and brothers, on the franco-german border. Her father was a coalminer and her mother, to whom she was very close, pushed her towards singing.
She started performing in concerts at the age of 8 and, by the time she was 13, was singing cabaret at a club across the german border every saturday night. It was there, aged 19, that she was talent-spotted by a local architect who pulled a few strings and helped her to record a demo-tape in Paris. The tape eventually landed on the desk of Gérard Depardieu. Intoxicated by the country girl with the delicate looks and the smoky vamp voice, he produced her first single, Jealous, which led to a series of hits.
Since then, Kaas has been at the top of her profession - although she has undergone numerous dramatic makeovers to maintain her durability. "People tried tomake me something that I wasn't at the beginning of my career", she admits, with one of a little self-deprecatory laughs that pepper her rapid-fire conversation.
The hairspray and oversized earrings have been replaced by the kind of relaxed chic that only comes at a price. But even though she "indulges a bit in clothes", Kaas is the antithesis of the brash, self-satisfied star. Rather, she often seems to need a good hug and a promise that everything will be allright.
Yet success always has its bitter twist. For Kaas, it was about her mother, to had done so much to launch her career, dide when she was 20 and on the threshold of stardom. Soon after, her father died and, 15 years on, she seems scarcely to have recovered. "I'm not sad, but I'm melancholic. When you lose your mother at 20 and then your father soon after, melancholia is part of your life", she says.
Her romantic life has had its ups and downs, too. A 6-year relationship with belgian singer Philippe Bergman ended badly last year. She fled Paris where she had lived since her career took off, for Zurich. "I wanted to get out. To breathe", she says. "I had split up with the man I loved. I felt suffocated".
The split has been almost as upsitting as the death of her parents. "When we broke up, it was hard - thinking, perhaps I've already known the great love of my life", she says.
"When you are 25 or even 30,you can just do things. When you get to 35, things are different. Time is more precious to me now. I've got my priorities". One of which, to complete the restless thirtysomething profile, is to have a baby - though there is the slight problem of finding the right man. "I don't have to find the man of my life", she says. "I just have to find the baby's father."

Behind the delicate façade there is a toughness and determination, born of years running a successfull career in a notoriously tough business, that makes you think she'll succeed in her quest before too long. She's certainly making an effort and is knocking down the protective wall that she says she built around herself as a young woman.
"I always doubted myself", she says. "I doubted the way I looked, my body, my voice - everything. Before I did the film, I really lacked confidence in myself. I've never been the kind of person who can just go up to someone and start a conversation. But I'm more open now."
That must help when it comes to the dating game ? "To meet a man today, you have to make the first move and I wasn't brought up like that. It's difficult."
But Kaas has discovered a secret weapon to overcome the problem. His name is Téquila and he was a present from Claude Lelouch after And Now... Ladies & Gentlemen was finished. "He is a little Maltese dog, like a little white rat, really", she says, smilling broadly. "But he's great because, normally, people are too scared to come up and talk to me. But when I'm walking Téquila, they just come right up. He helps me to meet people."