Blind Date
by Hedda Moye

The setting is perfect. The Cote d'Azur has turned on its finest weather. The boat moored furthest from all the intense networking of the Cannes Film Festival is polished and palatial. On board is one of the world's most sensitive and gorgeous men--Christopher Lambert.

Now, I'm not tying to make a Mills And Boon out of our meeting, but I confess, I am a true fan. The truest. As I await his arrival, I fantasise about being 52kg for our meeting instead of 68kg and eight months pregnant. Finally he shows, full of apologies, most sincere. All of a sudden he's not a star at all. He's Christopher Lambert Soothsayer, predicting the gender of my unborn baby. Resting his hand on my protruding stomach for a good 90 seconds, he tells me I'm expecting a boy. How many women - besides his wife, that is - can say they've had Christopher -Lambert, a major screen idol, lay his hand on their tummy? But Christopher Lambert is not your average movie star. "The only reason I've come here is to announce Fortress [his next movie] and that's it," he declares. 'The fact that I am on a boat means I can be away from the festival. Not that I'm against it. I think an actor should be at the festival - if he's got a movie to present."

The fact is, French actor Christopher Lambert has much more important business to attend to in Australia. He is due here in September to promote Highlander II, and to begin shooting Fortress, a high-tech tale set in a post-nuclear landscape off in the year 2013. Lambert plays a former soldier who murders a robot and is sentenced to the most sophisticated maximum-security prison ever built: the Fortress. When Lambert's character is alerted to his wife's pregnency, he is moved to escape. What a guy!

l've wanted to get to Australia ever since Highlander I, five years ago," he says. "I've seen photographs, I've seen videos and have the best relationship with Russell Mulcahy [Australian and director of Highlander 1, II and, soon to be, III].

I love the guy. I love his mentality and I believe Australians are easy-going people and that you enjoy life and have fun and that will suit me. I've noticed that there's not much bullshit about Australians and that's what I like in people because you don't find it a lot in this business. I'm also very excited about the movie because I think it's a great script." I believe him. It must have something to do with those penetrating, all-consuming eyes of his. The same magnetic orbs that won him his first major role as the sensitive, vine-leaping Tarzan in Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan. The eyes that appear to look through you are actually looking for you. A myopic Christopher Lambert with his wife, actress Diane Lane.

As Hugh Hudson, the film's director explained to journalists back in 1984, as to why the little-known Lambert was cast after an exhaustive international search: It was his wonderfully noble face and compassionate eyes. He's an instinctive actor, a highly intelligent man. He'll be a star no doubt about it."

The irony is the eyes are those of an extremely myopic individual Lambert is as blind as a bat. But even behind gold-rimmed spectacles, Those eyes make you want to believe you've been told the truth. They look right through you. "They're not looking right through you, they are trying to find you," he says, with humorous self-deprication. "I can't see a thing without my glasses, so when I take them during filming I have to work hard to focus on everything."

With a strong focus on Fortress, Lambert is not concerned about being typecast in he-man adventure roles. "If it does typecast me, by making those kind of movies, I'm very happy because I love action movies. It doesn't mean that's the only thing I'm going to do. I think the fact that I'm not a hunk means I can do other roles, too." Excuse me? He might seem a little shorter in real life, a little grayer, and perhaps even understated in his ensemble of gray sweater and jeans, but not a hunk? "Okay so I'm not judging myself," he says, "but remember I get to look at myself in the mirror every day."

I don't want to do reality - we live that everyday - I want to do things that make me dream.

"I'm a great fan of action movies and they are fun to shoot," he says. "I don't want to do reality - we live that every day - I want to do things that make me dream. Fortress makes me dream, Highlander II makes me dream."

Lambert's most recent film, however, smacked of real life. Starring opposite his wife Diane Lane, the love scenes glowed with reality. It was their first movie together; partly financed by his fledgling company Lambert Productions.

"The movie is called Knight Moves and it was a very pleasant experience working together though I don't think that we will make a movie together more than every three years because it's so intense," he says. "Most of the time, I'm a character in the movie, and she's a character in the movie, and that's the way I'm looking at it - until we have to get into bed together. Suddenly holy shit, I'm back in reality doing a love scene. That's really weird."

Despite his full slate of movie-making, Lambert doesn't have to work in a movie with his wife to get to see her "We do get to see each other a lot, although she doesn't travel much with me because she doesn't like to travel. So I've got my private life and my home life. But I don't have a good sense of what family is.

"Not because I had a bad family but my parents were traveling all the time and so my family has always been my friends. When I was younger I loved my friends to death. I couldn't live without them. I loved my parents too, of course, but I didn't have the same contact because I was either in boarding school [in Switzerland] or staying with friends.

"I'm a great fan of action movies." "I haven't seen Madonna's movie (in Bed With Madonna ] yet," he continues, "but I've heard that there is one line in it which I think is absolutely true - that just because you are a movie actor or star doesn't mean that all the other stars suddenly are your friends."

After Fortress, Lambert intends to return to his home in Los Angeles and take up the helm of his production company. "The purpose of the company is to be at the origin of something," he says. "It's not about control. I have people who do that. It allows me to work all the time. I'm doing two movies a year and so you've got 6 months to do something."

He has no aspirations to be director and even less to pursue stage acting. "All these people keep talking with great seriousness about 'the craft of acting', trying to impress people with being intellectual about it. Acting should be simple, life should be simple. Anyway nothing could appeal to me less. You have to rehearse for three months and then repeat the same line 100 times. Pain in the arse."

And with that passionate outburst, Lambert suddenly jumps up realizing he has sworn in front of the baby. He becomes distraught and we are back where we started-Christopher Lambert apologizing. All of a sudden I find myself promising to call the baby Christopher. He scribbles down his fax number so I can let him know if his prediction is correct [alas, Hedda Moye has since given birth to a girl] and gives me a peck on each cheek before disappearing into the boat.

For a moment my pregnancy waddle also disappears. I'm walking on air!