“You’ll have to ask him”: does Steven Spielberg hate Juliette Binoche?
Most actors would walk through hot coals for the chance to work with Steven Spielberg, but despite the filmmaker making repeated overtures, he eventually abandoned his long-held dreams of recruiting Juliette Binoche for one of his features.
The trio in question ended up earning over $1.8billion at the box office, won 11 Academy Awards from 18 nominations, and became known as three of Spielberg’s finest efforts from behind the camera, so it wouldn’t be outside the realms of possibility for Binoche to end up expressing some regrets of her own.
She had her reasons on every occasion, though, even if any one of the three would have done wonders for her visibility and earning power. Playing a major role in a hit blockbuster or an awards season favourite can often be beneficial to a performer should their role be integral enough, but Binoche ended up going zero-for-three on her potential Spielbergian partnerships.
Binoche was only at the beginning of her career, too, having made just one film outside of her native France when the director came calling. She was approached with an offer to board Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade but knocked it back because she was shooting The Lovers on the Bridge with Louis Carax.
There’s no word on which part she was offered, but considering Elsa Schneider is the only noteworthy female part in the entire movie, the smart money would be on the multi-generational love interest and nefarious Nazi. There’s no debate about Jurassic Park, however, with Binoche declining Ellie Sattler.
She put that one down to scheduling conflicts, with Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy taking precedence. Binoche was pregnant when he tried to lure her in again for Schindler’s List, where she was presumably being eyed for either Emilie Schindler, Helen Hirsch, or Wiktoria Klonowska, who were all played by stars in or around her age bracket.
In the years that followed Last Crusade, Jurassic Park, and Schindler’s List, Binoche became an internationally renowned actor when The English Patient won her an Oscar of her own, so missing out on three high-profile hits hardly slowed down her ascension. Does Spielberg hold a grudge? She’s got no idea, but neither was she able to offer a definitive answer.
“Does Steven Spielberg hate me?” she reflected to The Guardian. “You’ll have to ask him. I haven’t bumped into him for a while. I don’t think he cares that much that I said no.” What Binoche definitely did was call out Spielberg and one of his peers for the lack of female representation in their films, which may or may not have exacerbated any ill will between them.
Binoche revealed she once queried Spielberg on why so few of his movies have been about women, to which he played The Color Purple card in response. She asked Martin Scorsese much the same thing, so don’t count on her working with him, either.
