Marion Cotillard | Interview | Nicole Kidman & Mikael Jansson

Nicole Kidman and Marion Cotillard became friends on the set of “Nine”. Talking up Cotillard was a natural for Kidman in the new issue of Interview, on newstands today.

‘You are the most Earth-based of all of us. That’s a very strange paradox. You have this fairy quality, like you’re flitting through trees and stars, and then at the same time, you’re really grounded. It’s very hypnotic,’ Kidman says, weaving poetry around Cotillard almost as filmy and goddess-like, as the clothes she wears for Interview.

Besides the gorgeous photography ahead,  Kidman shares more girl talk about Mother Nature:

NICOLE KIDMAN: Marion!

MARION COTILLARD: Nicole, where are you?

KIDMAN: I’m in Nashville. Where are you?

COTILLARD: I’m in Paris.

KIDMAN: But weren’t you just in the Congo?

COTILLARD: I was until two days ago. I was in the Congo for a week because I’ve been working with Greenpeace for a while and I’ve been wanting to do a documentary about the forest there. It’s one of the most ancient forests in the world and I met all of these amazing people who are trying to fight against the timber industry cutting down the trees there. People were telling me all about their lives and how they are trying to survive in a country where there is so much corruption. I even slept in one of the forest villages. I really connected to the people there—their hopes and despair and struggles. It was an intense and beautiful trip.

KIDMAN: Are you hopeful that this forest can be saved?

We learn the situation is “pretty dire”. With all our writing about women, civil waar and bonobos, Cotillard says that now businesses from Europe to China are moving to cut down the rainforest. Europe? Do we read that the Europeans are cutting down the rainforest in the Congo?COTILLARD: Well, the situation is pretty dire. The civil war there lasted for almost a decade, which in an odd way actually saved the forest from being destroyed during that time. 

We’ve read plenty of African-generated editorials telling the likes of Marion Cotillard to keep her fairy dust in France. For better or worse, Marion Cotillard is another of the Smart Sensuality women we keep writing about: sensual, smart, sexy, spiritual and pragmatic about the place of materialism in our lives and its cost to others on the planet.

The Interview focus on Marion Cotillard, coupled with really beautiful (if a bit overtouched in places) photography by Mikael Jansson, affirms the direction of Smart Sensuality media. We’re not reading much about clubbing and million-dollar bras these days.

Fashion is getting in the trenches — granted with style and celebrity, too — but we love the message: thinking is in. Now go look at the pretty picture. Anne

More Reading:  Anne’s Extensive Writing on Women in Congo