Restless Binoche graces Scots festivals on stage and screen

If there is a typical Binoche project, this might be it. The actress the French simply call "La Binoche" is one of the few that can truly be called international. Yes, she's worked in Hollywood - most recently in Godzilla - and she won an Oscar for The English Patient. But her bread-and-butter comes from collaborating with world cinema auteurs, from Poland to Iran to Taiwan, filming all across the globe. Well, almost. "I've never made a film in Russia," she smiles.

Factor in her regular stage ventures - theatre, dance - and there probably isn't a medium this 50 year-old icon hasn't conquered. Restless and forever working, filmgoers attending the Glasgow Film Festival can see her in Clouds of Sils Maria (in the Swiss Alps this time) before it goes on general release in May, while Binoche herself is about to embark on a country-hopping tour - including a prestigious pit-stop at the Edinburgh festival - with a new production of Antigone.

Little wonder it took Coixet nine months to get an answer from Binoche, when it came to playing Peary in Nobody Wants The Night. "I was calling her from time to time, texting her, but she's always doing dance, performances, paintings. She's a very hard-working person. And she'd always say, 'Wait - when I have the concentration, I will read it.'" Binoche, who is also a mother-of-two, underlines that it's not out of arrogance. "When I read the script, I said 'yes' immediately!"

Understandably so - Peary is a delicious character. Wife to Robert Peary, who set out to conquer the North Pole, this grand dame of New York society decides to meet her husband part-way through his expedition, crossing the Arctic wastes with the help of local Inuit people she treats with utter disdain. Binoche believes Peary is a perfect embodiment of western arrogance. "It's still very accurate. We come into the world with the idea of conquering it, and controlling it."

Binoche has shot in extreme conditions before - when she made The Widow of Saint-Pierre, it was partly shot in Canada in minus-thirty conditions. This time, exteriors were filmed in Norway, though rather amusingly, the scenes set in an igloo were shot in a studio in Tenerife. "We tried some tricks - like having a freezer truck," laughs Binoche. "I would put myself in that once in a while. Or putting the air conditioning up in the studio, but when you're shooting you have to turn it off because it makes so much noise."

Next week, Binoche embarks on her next major project - a half-year tour with a contemporary version of classical tragedy Antigone, by Sophokles as the Edinburgh International Festival is spelling it. Translated by poet Anne Carson, it's a production that premieres in Luxembourg, before heading to London's Barbican, various European cities, and then Edinburgh in August, where it will play at the King's Theatre for eleven nights; undeniably, the chance to see Binoche perform live will be one of the must-see events of this year's Festival.

Playing the title role, a woman who defends her late brother's honour when he's declared a traitor, it'll be an emotional and exhausting journey, but "something special", she estimates. "Antigone is a very wise play," she says. "In a very short time...being able to see and feel the core of the big questions of life, and what's important to human beings, in order to evolve or to realize themselves."

Stage has always been vital for her development. "It's been my root since I was a kid, because I was raised with parents who loved theatre as well. The smell of the theatre, or the passion for the theatre, has always been in the family. So very early on, when I started to go and see plays, I had it in me. Movies came to my life, and that took me by surprise. I didn't expect to be an actress of movies - it just happened like this."

Born in Paris, Binoche's parents were not just enthusiasts; her father was theatre director Jean-Marie Binoche and her mother actress Monique Stalens. They divorced when Binoche was 4 and she was sent with her sister Marion to a Catholic boarding school, where she first discovered acting. By the time she returned to live with her mother, she attended a specialized arts school in Paris, before winning places at the National School of Dramatic Art of Paris and the Paris Conservatoire.

She briefly considered a career as an artist - and she still paints today - but after gaining an agent through a friend, she joined a theatre troupe that toured France, Belgium and Switzerland. Film work followed, with Binoche's breakthrough coming on André Téchiné's 1985 erotic drama Rendez-Vous; she was even nominated for a French César (the first of nine, she's won once, for Three Colours: Blue). "Before that, people didn't know me," she says. "I had roles here and there - with great directors of course - but they didn't really take off."

It was also the film that introduced her to Olivier Assayas, who co-scripted the movie before moving into directing. He and Binoche stayed friends, working together on the 2008 ensemble Summer Hours and now Clouds of Sils Maria. Binoche plays Maria Enders, a middle-aged actress asked to star in a new version of a play that made her famous twenty years ago - but this time playing the older character. Taking her original role is Chloe Moretz's young starlet, while Kristen Stewart adds spice as her personal assistant.

Has Binoche ever experienced feelings of jealousy and insecurity that ultimately grip her character? "Not really, because I had roles that really made me happy," she replies, bluntly. But it's not always easy. There are "some moments", she says, "when you have this feeling of power that being an actress can give you, in the recognition, and how sometimes you have less attention, so you feel like you're losing something...but I think it's really important to feel that. Power is all illusion anyway."

She's delighted by the film, which was awarded the Prix Louis Delluc in France and will also compete at the Césars, with Binoche up for Best Actress. "It was a dream of mine I had to make the movie with Olivier," she says, delighted. It doesn't always happen this way. Bruno Dumont's Camille Claudel 1915, in which she gave a harrowing turn as the asylum-bound sculptor, bombed. "I thought was going to be something that was very important," she sighs. Even Binoche can't win them all.

Clouds of Sils Maria screens at the Glasgow Film Festival on February 22 and 23, and goes on general release on May 15. Antigone plays at the King's Theatre, Edinburgh, from August 9.