“She should be more grateful for what she has,” she says, voice rising. “The life of Mireille Foix is a dream. So many love her and dote on her. I designed this house with her in mind, you know. I designed it to look like the childhood home of Mireille’s dreams. Her real childhood was awful, I’m sure, so I know she invented the one she did for good reason. I know it. And I’ve been in this house, waiting for her to return to me for years—only telling the press just enough so the world won’t forget about her. Imagine if the world knew the truth, girls—”

The next sentence she enunciates, shaking her head.

“Imagine if the world knew she isn’t Mireille Foix at all. If they knew she’s really just a Jewess, formerly known as Lady Fleischman, from Elizabeth, New Jersey. Lady! Her parents practically named her to walk the streets.”

BOY

EXCERPT FROM VOGUE MAGAZINE COVER INTERVIEW WITH MIREILLE FOIX HAMMICK

SEPTEMBER 2004

You wouldn’t be wrong in thinking that Mireille Foix Hammick is a temptress. In truth, she is the world’s finest actress because she can be everyone. She can give viewers everything they think they want. But I’ve heard from other interviewers that if you take what she first offers, she can become impossible to truly know. So when I first meet her, at a coffee shop in Limatra, I avoid her eyes instinctually: The navy pools purportedly entranced leading men, heads of state, and even two popes in the years before meeting Hëró Hammick at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982. (He saved her when she slipped and fell off a yacht during a party, and the rest is history.) I wanted the real Mireille, untempered by her charisma. I asked her what I thought to be a safe question: Why move out to the fringes of the Delirium Forest with her daughters and husband, instead of staying in Limatra city center or renovating a prize mansion in Mitella?

“Our Stökéwood home was Hëró’s idea. I won’t bore you by claiming I crave a simple life, when all evidence is to the contrary. I would’ve traveled around the globe with my daughters—showed them everything I didn’t get to see as a child, myself. But I now see that Hëró was right to wish for a calm, rural Viloki childhood for them. I want them to feel rooted in their home country forever—I never want them to worry about where they came from, to feel lost and unwelcome in this complex world we live in. And I know it’s the best base for me to embark upon the most important work of my life, the Foix Institute. So, consider this the next act: a stab at a more peaceful existence in the forests at the base of Mount Vilox.”