Now she wants to push another boundary.
“I would love to play a man. For an actress that's the ultimate challenge,” the French star who admits to “reading a lot of the Marquis de Sade at the moment”, told a talk at the Cannes film festival Friday.
Huppert, who made her name playing icy murderers, sado-masochists and abortionists, has teamed up for a third time with Michael Haneke for “Happy End”, which is the running for the festival's top prize.
The Austrian's fierce take on the refugee crisis, which premieres Monday, is about a wealthy family who live near Calais in northern France, where thousands of migrants camped waiting for a chance to cross the Channel to Britain.
Huppert, 64, said she had no regrets about taking roles that sometimes made audiences squirm.
“I neither need to love nor not like a character (to play them). Cinema is not about presenting the nice side of people to the world, but to show what is difficult to admit,” she told a “Women in Motion” talk.
“I prefer roles that cross the lines rather than those that go straight,” she added.
Huppert said she had never suffered from open sexism in the film industry, but “I never wanted to put myself in a position where I was likely to suffer from it.
“I see the dangers from afar. I would never have tolerated being the target of sexism, but I know it happens to others,” she added.
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