France’s Two Isabelles : Movies: Adjani hopes her title role as the tormented sculptor in ‘Camille Claudel’ carves an American niche.

Isabelle Adjani, usually to be found in Paris, was in town to see a few friends and attend a screening of her new film, “Camille Claudel.” It is her first movie since “Ishtar” and perhaps will do a bit more to show Americans why she is considered one of France’s leading film actresses. In it, she plays the title role of Camille Claudel, the neglected 19th-Century French sculptor who apprenticed herself to the modern master Auguste Rodin (played by Gerard Depardieu), loved him too well and let him drive her mad.

“Some people think Rodin can’t have done that to her,” Adjani said, sitting up straight in a Westside hotel room. “He’s known for being a womanizer. He’s done a lot of harm to a lot of women during his time. And I think he’s like a lot of very, very many great artists--a great man in his art and a very small man in his life.”

For a moment, it seemed possible she had drifted from the subject of Rodin and was talking about her former lover and comrade-in-”Ishtar,” Warren Beatty.

“Warren Beatty?” she laughed, sitting up even straighter. “My God. Tell me where his sculptures are! I’d love to see that.” She laughed some more and then said, “Of course, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Of course.

Adjani, who has had to live with claims made by certain admirers and journalists that she is “the most beautiful woman in the world,” was dressed severely in black from high neck to high heel, her face a gauzy white and no nail polish to be found at the ends of her long pale fingers. “It’s like a joke,” she said about her celebrated beauty. “I just blush and then forget it. I mean, sometimes, when I’m looking in the mirror and thinking, ‘You don’t look pretty today,’ I think about that and it makes me laugh again.”

There is a resemblance in her face to existing photographs of Camille Claudel, the talented bourgeoise who became Rodin’s student and lover at the age of 20. While she collaborated with Rodin on a number of famous pieces, including “The Gates of Hell” and “The Burghers of Calais” (she did the feet and hands), Claudel spent the last 30 years of her life in an insane asylum and never achieved much of a reputation independent of her mentor.

Her story was not well-known even in France until the appearance in 1984 of a biography by Claudel’s grandniece, Reine-Marie Paris, which became the basis for the film. It is a portrait of the artist as a compulsive young woman and, Adjani’s presence notwithstanding, it is not a pretty picture. Hectored by her disapproving family, exploited by Rodin, unable to establish an independent career, Claudel is shown in one scene of advancing madness trying to destroy many of the sculptures she created.

Giving vent to the obsessions of the tragic Camille, Adjani recalls the role that made her an international star, that of Victor Hugo’s love-crazed daughter in Francois Truffaut’s “The Story of Adele H.,” released in 1975.

“When I’m asked, ‘Did you identify with her?’ ” she said about Claudel, “the only thing I can think of is, ‘Great, if you can identify me with her, then it means it works.’

“Thinking about her, dreaming about her, feeling sorry for her was a great source of inspiration for me. At the end, she was like a trapped animal. She just couldn’t cope with the outside world anymore. I think she decided to destroy herself as an artist. She gave up. At the same time, I don’t think she was a victim. Someone who is an artist can say, ‘I can create and can make what I create disappear.’ ” Apparently reminded of some of her past films, she added, “That’s something that actors can’t do, that’s for sure.”

Although she has been decorated with her share of formal acting honors, including an Academy Award nomination for “The Story of Adele H.,” best actress at Cannes for James Ivory’s “Quartet” in 1981 and now the French equivalent of the Academy Award for her role as Camille, in America Adjani remains more famous than any of her movies.

The mention of her first American film, “The Driver,” for macho director Walter Hill, brought the beginnings of a frown to her lips. “A bad choice,” she said succinctly.

Tapped by director Elaine May to play the desert siren who lured songwriters-from-hell Beatty and Dustin Hoffman into a sandstorm of absurdist political intrigue in “Ishtar,” she had hopes for something better. “We just spent a few months in the desert” is how she remembers the experience. “It was a nice script with wonderful actors and a director whose previous movies I really liked. And then . . . ‘Ishtar.’ Well, these things happen.”

She was subsequently offered the ultimate femme fatale role--eventually played by Glenn Close--in “Fatal Attraction,” but by then had discovered Paris’ book about Camille Claudel and was developing it with cinematographer Bruno Nuytten. Nuytten, who directed the picture, is her former lover and the father of her 10-year-old son, Barnabe.

“Usually when people break up,” she explained, “things become sad or sordid, which is not what happened with us. We like each other and respect each other and we wanted to find a way to express that.”

She helped raise the $15-million budget, expensive by French standards, hired Nuytten and screenwriter Marilyn Goldin and served as the film’s unofficial producer. But, as she pointed out, being the producer isn’t such a big deal in France.

“It is not the same as here,” she said, gesturing toward a window that looked out on the blue December skies of Beverly Hills. “Here, producers are very powerful. In France, they are just to raise the money; there is no artistic involvement. The director is the master on board. If a director wants to say to the producer, ‘Get out of the editing room,’ the guy jumps and says, ‘Oh, yes, I’m sorry I disturbed you.’ ”

While she is well-known in France, Adjani said she can walk the streets free of the frightening adulation that makes recluses of many American movie stars. On occasion, she will wear sunglasses to the market or to her aerobics workout. “If you are in a gym class with other women and even if you are in shape, you feel like, ‘Do they think my legs are not right?’ Since you are supposed to be the perfect one, they look for the defects. It’s such an embarrassment.”

The child of an Algerian father and a Bavarian mother, Adjani, 34, believes she was born with wanderlust in her blood. She is known for staying on the run, even in Paris, where she beds down regularly at different addresses. “I have a lot of friends in Paris, and I love to get away from home. I loved my freedom as an adolescent and I’d love to be an adolescent again. I go to my friend’s and spend two days there, and have breakfast there, and, you know that feeling: Life hasn’t started to be difficult yet.”

For women artists, things are still tough in most parts of the world, but Adjani’s film about Camille Claudel has restored at least one long-tarnished heroine’s reputation while chipping a few pieces of marble off the 20th Century’s image of the great Rodin.

Not that Rodin loyalists have anything to worry about in Adjani’s estimation. “He is very well installed in Paris,” she said. “There’s nothing that can hurt him. There’s the Musee Rodin. There’s no Musee Claudel--yet.”