IN EUROPE THE PRESS HAS CALLED HIM "MONSIEUR Heartthrob" and "a nice bit of Euro-crumpet"—and in this case, it's true what they say about 50 million Frenchmen not being wrong. In France—or in love—Swiss-born actor Vincent Perez, 30, certainly speaks the language. "Vincent isn't just good-looking," says Nick Hamm, who directed him in
Talk of Angels, due out this fall. "He has that smoldering intensity of the French." Whether he's displaying it I onscreen (as Catherine Deneuve's seducer in
Indochina and Isabelle Adjani's lover in
Queen Margot) or off (he has had live-in relationships with Jacqueline Bisset and Carla Bruni), Perez attributes his appeal to his bloodlines: "German from the waist up, Spanish from the waist down," he says naughtily. Even as a gentle teenager in Lausanne, "I was seducing more the older women than the girls my age. Everybody would always tell me, 'You're going to be a beautiful man when you're 40.' "
Only time will tell. "When you're young, your looks are given to you," says Perez, hearkening back to an unassailable French expert. "Coco Chanel said that when you're 50 you're responsible for your face."
