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The moment director Anne Fontaine came face-to-face with actress Audrey Tatou, she knew she had found her Coco Chanel.
"When I saw Audrey, it was incredible. In the pictures, when Chanel was younger, it was the way she looked. Her body was so thin and very androgynous... Audrey has some points that are very close to Gabrielle (Bonheur "Coco") Chanel, I think. She had this big intensity and determination. I just had to help her be more fragile," the Luxembourg-born Fontaine, 40, told TODAY on the phone from Brittany, France.
The Amelie star takes on the role of French fashion icon in Coco Before Chanel, which opens in cinemas Thursday.
The biopic chronicles Chanel's rags-to-riches story at the start of the 20th century, stopping just at the brink of the famed haute couture icon's success.
When asked why she chose to stay away from the glitz and glamour aspect, Fontaine said it was simply because not a lot of people knew Chanel's roots.
"Many people, even in France, do not know where she came from. She's completely an autodidact (self-taught), a farm girl without any intellectual or aesthetic education. She only had her personality and, of course, this taste to know what is good and what is not good. But she built herself from this moment. It was good to stop at the beginning of the celebrity. That's another movie and another period."
Fontaine said she had never met Chanel in person but she did meet her last assistant when she was 20. "I was very curious about Chanel's personality, her charisma," said Fontaine. "I liked very much her originality and her determination."
With more movies on the late French designer recently released or on its way (including Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, as well as a rumoured project starring Demi Moore), Fontaine said Chanel's life has been put under the microscope more intensely.
In particular, her Nazi-relations during World War II.
Chanel reportedly had an affair with German officer and spy Hans Gunther von Dincklage, and for a while was persona non grata until she was eventually assisted by Winston Churchill.
"She fell in love at a very bad moment historically and it was very difficult for her. For the French. It was a very important mistake," admitted Fontaine.
"But many other actresses also had stories with German officials. It was not only her - and she had many loves in her life," she added
Coco Before Chanel is out in cinemas on Thursday.
- TODAY/yb
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