FACED with two of the screen's most beautiful actresses, the inclination is to just sit and stare. This, however, would be a dereliction of journalistic duty - and besides one of them is sitting next to her husband. The film is Chocolat, the screen version of Joanne Harris's bestselling book, and the stars are Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin.

Like the film, French actress Binoche has been Oscar-nominated although her chance of adding another gold-plated statuette to the one for best supporting actress she took for The English Patient in 1977 is unlikely, with Julia Roberts reckoned a dead cert for the award.

She blotted her copybook playing Cathy in a less-than-successful version of Wuthering Heights, filmed in Yorkshire with Ralph Fiennes as her Eeethcleef, but has more than made up for that with a succession of French movies and her London stage debut in Pirandello's Naked.

Swedish actress Olin's husband is Chocolat director Lasse Hallstrom who made The Cider House Rules, My Life As A Dog - and somewhat surprisingly - Abba The Movie. Olin began her career with Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre with acclaimed director Ingmar Bergman. In Hollywood she's had Robert Redford, Richard Gere and Gary Oldman as leading men in films such as Havana and Mr Jones that haven't been hits.

The two actresses previously worked together in The Unbearable Lightness Of Being a decade or so ago. In Chocolat, Binoche is a woman who opens a sweet shop in a close-knit village community and causes the locals, including Olin's downtrodden wife, to find a new lease of life.

Binoche identifies with being an outsider, as her character Vianne is in Chocolat - "probably because my parents divorced when I was very young and at that time it was not common. I got used to being a little different and being an actor is such an abstract idea of living your life. We have to be independent, in a way, to be other people."

For Olin, being an outsider begins in school when just having the wrong kind of sneakers can make a child different from others. What she likes about the movie is her character Josephine's journey as finds out "who she wants to be". There's a lesson to be learnt too. "It's important to encourage our children and say if you see someone on the outside say 'hi, you can come in and be part of the group'."

She was working with her husband for the first time on Chocolat but describes the experience as wonderful, explaining: "I had seen Lasse on set and it always struck me how intact he was when I visited him. The pressure on directors must be enormous but Lasse on set was still as he is, making the breakfast at home and I couldn't believe that. He does not approach actors with an agenda and to experience that as an actress is fantastic.

"We talked about the film at home because during the shoot it's very intense and when you get home you are obsessed. It's on your mind, and to have access to the director even when he's brushing his teeth is marvellous. We don't talk about work when he's doing his own thing and I'm doing my own, but working together we did talk a lot. The movie became very personal."

Binoche learnt all about chocolate before filming began. "I wanted to go and see chocolate made and how the taste is different from Asia to Africa to South America. My secret was in the preparation. I have always loved chocolate, so for me it was a very close subject since I was a child," she says.

She visited author Harris in her Yorkshire home ("it was Easter so I bought a chocolate rabbit") to see how much of her was in Vianne. "What did I learn? I can't really answer because it was about a way of reacting," she says.

"She gave me a lot because she's open and happy. Once in a while during shooting I spoke to her on the telephone because it was her baby in a way. For me it's very important to go back to the writer. When I made Damage I spent a few afternoons with the writer Josephine Hart."

Filming in a shop full of chocolate offered plenty of sweet temptation although Binoche recalls it was a case of look but don't touch for fear of upsetting the continuity of a scene. "It was also hot because of the lights, so the chocolates were melting. I had very good chocolates in my dressing room rather than on the set. When you are surrounded by it you don't need it so much. At the moment, because of the subject of the film we have been offered a lot of chocolate. I am a little sick of it," she adds.

Olin feels the same, recalling shooting the scene in which Vianne prepares a special chocolate for her character. "I had to eat this delicate rose chocolate but if you have to eat 45, it's nauseating. Judi Dench and I also had to drink cups of hot chocolate which the props guy made like a chocolate sauce. After four cups of that you wanted to throw up," she says. "I was a big chocolate fanatic before the movie but suddenly my whole life is about chocolate. So I can't wait to get away from chocolate for a couple of months."

* Chocolat (12) opens in cinemas today