Her blondish hair has been cropped short, she wears no make-up and her loosely flowing dress cannot hide le bump. Vanessa Paradis has been propelled back into the celebrity front line. Not that she was ever very far away from the action. Partly, she only has herself to blame for the most recent bout of activity. Any relationship with bad boy Johnny Depp was bound to give cause for insatiable curiosity. Now that they live together with a baby, rumoured to be a boy, due next month, they are considered fair game. It's all too tempting for the Gallic media. At 26 she still has the aura of the teenager promoted and helped by the late Serge Gainsbourg among others. Her voice retains a bit of its little girl appeal first heard in her candid rendition of the Gainsbourg-produced Joe le Taxi at the age of 14 which became a massive hit in the UK and across Europe. Depp, at 35, always was a rebel waiting to be tamed as well as being a self -confessed francophile. At the recent French Oscars, the Cesars, he was given an honourary award by actor Pascal Greggory who divulged their secret thereby making them national property. They've been together for more than a year since he left Kate Moss. In February Depp, fulfilling his duties as expectant father, made a tour of the Cote d'Azur to seek out a property, helped by Paradis's father, an interior design consultant, who knows the area well. Four million francs later, their love nest as the scandal sheets insist on styling it, at Saint Aygulf, near Saint Tropez, with stunning views over the sea, awaits the new arrival. The paparazzi have been falling out of the trees. The couple chose the location because it's where they first spent romantic interludes together before the rest of the world cottoned on to their liaison. Depp and Paradis, who met at a dinner in Paris given by mutual friends, have been to-ing and fro-ing to London by private jet where he is finishing his new film Sleepy Hollow. And his current presence has become even more high profile on the continent as he smoulders out of billboards for the fashion chain H&M promoting trendy knits for a knockdown 170 francs (or roughly GBP 17). She has been equally prominent in magazines and on chat shows this week - her task being specifically to promote her new film La Fille sur le Pont (The Girl on the Bridge), directed by Patrice Leconte of The Hairdresser's Husband fame, who last year also cast her with those two veteran Gallic icons Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon in the caper comedy Une Chance sur Deux (Half a Chance). It bombed at the box office and with the critics. Paradis had already committed to the new film before shooting on the other title had begun and early indications suggest she need have no qualms. She appears determined to keep the bounds of discussion tightly reined. Yes, she's a celeb, but no, she won't share her private life with anyone. "There are people who do this job just to be rich and famous. I'm not one of them. You're very exposed as an actor and the prospect of celebrity makes me frightened. Yes, the money is useful and has advantages but even so it scares me. There's no reason I should share my private life with the whole world. I don't answer personal questions - I'll do interviews to promote a film, that's all. The rest, though, belongs to me. So let's move on." Hint taken, and in the circumstances it would be impolite to demur. Paradis whose past loves have included rocker Lenny Kravitz and French singer Florent Pagny, almost double her age, is quite capable of handling any situation after her 12 years in the business. "I've learned a lot," she says with the famous reflective pout. "In the beginning it all happened too quickly. People despised me when Joe le Taxi sold two million copies and reached number two in your country. But for the last few years I've been in charge of the rhythm, instead of feeling I have to rush off and try everything." It was a bit of a struggle in the early days. Her entry into the business was through her uncle Didier Pain (an actor and later her manager) who introduced her to Gainsbourg, an old hand at turning pubescent French girls into hot properties - Isabelle Adjani, Jane Birkin, France Gall and Bardot. After Joe Le Taxi, Paradis found graffiti on walls near her home which read: Vanessa Paradis is a whore. "Girls treated me as a bitch and pulled my hair. They thought everything that happened to me was too good to be true. When I met people on the street I got the impression they almost wanted to excuse themselves. Just before I went off to the States one woman came up to me and spat in my face," says Paradis with a "what do I care?" shrug. Why should she give a damn if that's the price she has to pay for her now enviable existence? In any case, girls never liked her - at school all her friends were male. Her mother Corinne acted as her chaperone and confidante and demanded some of the nude scenes be excised from Noce Blanche (White Wedding), her first film. Enough remained to create more than just a frisson among the populace of both sexes. Her mother moved her to an exclusive Paris school in the hope she would be able to make new friends but the girls there were the worst. "They wouldn't even talk to me or even to look at me," recalls Paradis. Mind you, her performance of Joe le Taxi, with microphone held phallic like in her mitts, was not the sort of behaviour well-bred mademoiselles were supposed to acknowledge. Especially before they left school. With the benefit of distance and hindsight, she says: "People think because you are young, that people control you and do with you what they want. But it is not a question of age, but a question of personality and character. If you know what you want to do, you just have to impose your ideas and don't let people control you. People don't stop talking about me; they think they know me, but they don't know shit. They create things about me but they're completely wrong." That's the paradox about Paradis: she acts one thing but is something else entirely different. The chameleon in her soul is impossible to pin down. It was the decision to break into acting that brought her credibility and a certain grudging respect from les frangais. Her performance in Noce Blanche provoked plaudits, although many tediously confused her precocious character with the real Vanessa. One French national daily said: "The eruption of Vanessa Paradis on our screens marks an event as important as Isabelle Adjani's arrival into the world of entertainment." Then there was the Cesar ... Gainsbourg again appeared on the scene to write the words for her second album - and she became the face of Chanel. She appeared in their print ads adorned in fishnet stockings, while the television ones were suitably quirky, masterminded by avant-garde art director Jean-Paul Goude. He saw her as an ethereal bird on a high wire in a golden cage. Goude proffered the view: "I thought she was the spitting image of Tweetie Pie, my favourite cartoon as a child." The Kravitz connection came when she moved to New York to make a third album with him. She enjoyed the lifestyle so much she stayed on. At the time she said: "I can breathe here without being spied upon or judged." Kravitz claimed she was his Pygmalion. On screen she seems to have made a speciality out of portraying fragile and disillusioned characters - from Noce Blanche, for which she won her best newcomer award to her second feature, Elisa, made five years later with Gerard Depardieu and directed by Jean Becker, which brought inevitable sex kitten comparisons with Brigitte Bardot. She played a dope -smoking orphan who tries to find her father who she blames for her mother's suicide. Both men declared themselves suitably impressed with her abilities. Becker said: "She is already a great actress and is fantastically gifted for the cinema. Depardieu stated: "She definitely has what it takes." By that time she had left home to live with her boyfriend of three years. "My parents were very frightened but they trusted the guy and they trusted me, so that was fine." They're said to get on famously with Depp. Paradis claims her characters are always ready to fight back and grab their destiny rather than being supine. In the new film she plays Adele, who, she says, is neither unintelligent or naive. She deserves happiness. The trouble is that she looks for it where she shouldn't. The film opens with a long monologue in which she recounts all her misfortunes. Then we find her on the bridge, about to jump when Daniel Auteil appears ... and eventually she gives him a reason for living too. "I would never put myself in as much danger as Adele does. I'm more suspicious by nature." She follows Auteil from Paris to Istanbul in a quirky relationship in which she becomes the target for his knife-throwing act. Stylishly filmed in monochrome the film has already been received favourably. Patrice Leconte has also been generous in his praise of Paradis. "I've never met someone with such a thirst for life," he has said. She returns the compliment: "Patrice knows exactly what he wants and that's very reassuring for an actor. You want to do your best for him ... and more." Paradis was rather astonished that it took only these two films for people to take her seriously, whereas three albums and a Europe-wide tour failed to have the same effect. However, it's not all been plain sailing: besides the disappointing response to Une Chance sur Deux she fared little better in a romantic comedy with Jean Reno, Un Amour de Sorciere (Witch Way Love) in which she had to weave spells with veteran Jeanne Moreau. The two had sung together at the opening of the Cannes Film Festival three years ago (a duet of Le Tourbillon de la Vie from Jules et Jim) which gave producer Christian Fechner the idea for the unlikely pairing. She took the part to ring the changes: "I was fed up playing dark and rebellious adolescents. Anyway I'm too old," she says blithely, shooting a smile through the neatly gapped teeth. Six films in ten years appears paltry by comparison with some of her compatriotes and contemporaries. She prefers to take her time, in between continuing her singing and recording career. "I only do films I really want to do. If I'd had to make films to earn a living I would certainly have done more," she confesses. As an instinctive actress with no formal training she relied heavily on Leconte to guide her through the new film. "I asked him to warn me if I was going too close to myself. I wanted to change all that - my voice, the way I looked, my walk." The love-hate relationship she enjoys with the French public may start to abate with motherhood and a steady partner, although the feeling lurks that she might just have enjoyed all the notoriety. Gainsbourg once suggested: "French women treated Bardot exactly the same way. They always thought she was going to run off with their boyfriend." Now Mr Depp might have something to say about that.