French actor-singer Vanessa Paradis wants to be more than just the mother of Johnny Depp's babies, writes Paul Fischer. Vanessa Paradis seems at home at the Chateaux Marmont Hotel, which looms high amid the Hollywood Hills, with a spectacular view of the city skyline. The petite French actor-singer wears little make-up and daintily holds her cigarette in one hand while eating jelly beans from the other. It's hard to imagine that the waif-like 28-year-old, who last week announced she and Johnny Depp were expecting their second child, has been in show business since she was eight. A coincidence brought the young singer to the attention of the highly respected composer Franck Langolff. He wrote Joe Le Taxi as a present for Paradis and the then 14-year-old had a European smash hit. "Finally, success gave me the freedom to say what I liked and what I didn't like,'' she said. It was music that always fuelled Paradis's passion and she now says that it's music that she strives for, rather than the acting, which she stumbled across by accident. "If I could choose music over acting, then there's no doubt music would be my career choice, no question,'' she said. These days, Paradis divides her time between Paris, New York and now Los Angeles, "because it's the heart of the music industry''. Paradis is in the middle of cutting a new album, her first in several years. She said that "it will for the first time really define who I am as a person as well as an artist''. Part of that definition, she added somewhat sheepishly, has to do with her relationship with Depp. "Things are wonderful, couldn't be better. I'm at a great place,'' she said. The pair celebrated the birth of their first child, Lily-Rose Melody, last May and motherhood, she said, "is what makes my life so balanced. I never knew how truly great it would be, and Johnny dotes on her''. Her positive outlook in love and motherhood will be incorporated on this, as yet, untitled album. For the first time, she has contributed as a writer, "so I can truly express myself, both in French and English''. But it's not as a singer that Paradis is best known. As an actor, she has won plaudits for her film work. She was 16 when offered a part in Noce Blanche (White Wedding), playing a problem student whose teacher did everything he could to help her. In return, she seduced him, and consequently, the teacher's marriage broke up. The nude scenes in the film were daring and suddenly her tolerant and beloved family began to suffer from their eldest daughter's fame. Though Paradis received a French Oscar, the Cesar, for her work in that film, her private life was splashed across the tabloids, including a supposed affair with the producer of her second album, Serge Gainsbourg, and her relationship with the 30-year-old Florent Pogny. "It wasn't an easy time for me,'' she recalled. "Things happened so quickly.'' She was fed up with the impact her fame had on her all by the age of 18. So she fled to America. She looks back on that trip as a six-month holiday, working and learning the language. "It was great,'' she said. "Half a year away from my own language in voluntary exile and starting more or less at square one. It was the best thing that could have happened to me.'' She continued to work on her music through her fortuitous friendship with singer Lenny Kravitz. "We became good friends, nothing more, and that was important in a strange city. Lenny's words and music moved me. They told these funny yet simple stories that strike the imagination, which was perfect for me at that time.'' The album they came up with, Vanessa Paradis, had the most sceptical critics raving. As for her acting, "I tried to do films that I believed in,'' she said. Those films included the likes of Elisa (1995), Un Amour De Sorciere (1997) and Une Chance Sur Deux (1998). Her latest film, La Fille Sur Le Pont (The Girl On The Bridge) is a beautifully poetic film shot in black and white and evoking a magical quality, whose main theme is confidence, "the most important element in any relationship''. The film begins with loud and vibrant Turkish gypsy music and immediately cuts to Adele (Paradis), a 21-year-old with a self-confidence problem. She faces a psychologist who is only a voice, unseen by the audience. Next we cut to a Paris bridge where Adele is contemplating suicide. Suddenly, Gabor (Daniel Auteuil) appears. He earns his living throwing knives around live targets and a desperate woman is an ideal potential partner. What follows is a road movie during which two lost souls find each other, as they travel through Europe and discover good luck. Paradis, nominated last year for another Cesar Award, loved Girl On The Bridge because of its "utter simplicity and beauty''. She further loved being photographed in "a way that we rarely see, in an old-fashioned kind of movie''. The opening has her character talking about being in love with the idea of love. "I loved that romanticism and I could relate to that aspect of this character,'' she quietly explained. Paradis has no immediate plans to return to the screen. "I'm keen to finish this album and to spend time with my family,'' she said. "I'm very happy to be doing what I love and to have a child is also very special.'' Asked about the tabloid obsession with her and Depp, she is strangely dismissive. "I don't really care about it,'' she said. "Here in America, am I really so important? I don't think so.'' Perhaps others may disagree. QUOTE UNQUOTE: "The French are funny when it comes to my fame. Sometimes they are in raptures; at other times, I'm too young for it all."