Monica Bellucci has been asked about her beauty for close on four decades. The Italian-born actor – who started out as a model and holds the somewhat ambiguous distinction of becoming the oldest Bond girl – has caused many male journalists to overheat. In 2004, one interviewer called her “a distillation of every Italian perfection”, dwelling on the way “she brushes the cappuccino foam from her lips with the long, unpainted nails of her perfect fingers.”
Sitting opposite me in a quiet corner of a hotel bar in Paris, Bellucci appears to drink her coffee like a regular person (and sweetly worries when I don’t order any). When I ask her about these breathless accounts, she pauses before saying: “It’s funny. It’s just a fantasy that keeps going for no reason, because nobody believes it. I don’t believe it. The other person doesn’t, either.” Does she even read them? “No. It can be very boring,” she says drily.
