THE Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute's glittering fund-raising dinner last Saturday was organised around the theme of the 1977 movie , and leading participants in Bermuda's biggest ever box-office hit graced the dinner with their presence.

Leading lady Jacqueline Bisset enjoyed a long weekend at Cambridge Beaches, and before she flew home to Los Angeles on Monday, she gave an exclusive interview to the

Ms Bisset is a thoroughly professional and talented actress who has appeared in 72 films since her first uncredited walk-on in 1965, in She has lived in southern California since the '60s, but this sophisticated Englishwoman is very and her fluency in French has helped her land starring roles in a number of French and European productions, most famously as Julie in the late Fran?ois Truffaut's (or).

Ms Bisset arrived at the BUEI on Monday morning from Cambridge Beaches in Teddy Tucker's boat , in the company of director Peter Yates and his wife Virginia, and arrived at the Royal Caribbean Room for the interview with Michael Collier, an honorary trustee of BUEI.

She is known to be unimpressed by reporters (and critics) who drool over her beauty. Allowing that beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, and so forth, this beholder can not improve on the view of one Jan Wahl, writing last month in This woman possesses one of the great faces in cinema."

She is the sort of woman who looks you right in the eye. Her handshake is firm, her manner friendly and approachable. She is dressed elegantly and stylishly, but not fussily, in an array of earth tones. We can simultaneously spare our blushes and add to a reputation for creative plagiarism by turning again to the equally smitten Mr. Wahl: "She is drop-dead gorgeous, a natural beauty."

Quite so.

Ms Bisset flew to Bermuda last Saturday, only two days after arriving in Los Angeles from England, where she attended a family funeral. It was her second trip to the UK in a month. She had enjoyed the weekend, and her first visit since 1976 brought back memories of Bermuda's distinctive charms.

"It's been unbelievably pleasant. I spent the day with Edna and Teddy Tucker and (daughter) Wendy yesterday, and with Virginia and Peter Yates, and Michael (Collier).

"It was just a glorious day. We had lunch under an awning at Teddy's home at King's Point, looking out at the water, and we went for a ride in Michael's boat. Time seems to stop in certain places, and this seems to be a place where you have a sense of time passing very slowly, where people can lead a very civilised life."

Her memories of Bermuda during the making of were diffuse and somewhat impressionistic. The film required very concentrated work on a difficult project.

"It was very consuming, in terms of the diving. My memory of Bermuda is a mixed one, because I can't remember having a lot of time off. I remember seeing great beauty, and I loved the soft colours of the houses, and the distinctive architecture, and these are the predominant memories, but we were working all the time.

"I don't remember much socialising, or going to many restaurants or clubs. I stayed at the Southampton Princess while we were shooting, but we were on the set all the time, I think six days a week.

"But it was an amazing experience, beyond the obvious things like comfort and beauty. From my point of view, not being a good swimmer when I began, and realising that diving and swimming have little to do with each other, it was a memorable experience. We had to do a lot of swimming under water, and there were long distances to cover from point A to B.

"There was, effectively, a whole language to get in touch with to be able, technically, to shoot a film under water: where to go, and what to do, and how not to cause problems for all of our colleagues. Inadvertently, I almost caused some problems for (co-star) Nick (Nolte), and we became even more aware, under water, how dependent we were on each other."

Bisset felt particularly dependent on her underwater teacher, the expert cameraman Al Giddings, and felt very safe when he was behind the camera. She remembered having to be aware of rather rudimentary message systems to help avoid underwater confusion.

"There was a system whereby Peter Yates could get messages to the people above the water and a loudspeaker system would relay messages back down below, but mainly we used sign language. You really had to pay attention. To keep our spirits up when we had been weeks under water, they would play music like the theme from Kubrick's ."

Ms Bisset had faced the prospect of underwater filming with widely reported reluctance, but asked whether this aquatic experience had converted her into a water lover, she was unequivocal.

"I have not put my head under water since," she insisted. Not even in Californian swimming pools? " I love the idea of it, but I always seem to be around idiots who are likely to jump on top of me. I take the position that if I feel like swimming, I will do it when no one else is around. I am certainly a better swimmer now than when I filmed ."

The filming was not all work and no play. There was a certain amount of partying on the set, and Ms Bisset confirmed that the rumours surrounding the enthusiastic socialising of her co-stars Robert Shaw and Nick Nolte were not unfounded.

"They were so wild, and such fun. They were so naughty, the two of them, and they became fast friends. I had already worked with Robert, and I knew he was an absolute prankster. I was the perfect target for them, and they would gang up on me, both under water and above water. They were both a bit of a handful, but in a wonderful way."

Ms Bisset waxed lyrical about the beauty of Bermuda; the clarity of the water and the subtle shifts of colour in changing light at sunset. She has a highly developed appreciation of colour in nature, and returned often to that theme during the conversation.

"The different water colours create a powerful effect, and the sky last night was just so beautiful and breath-taking. And the frogs! I love the sound of these little frogs."

It is customary to ask famous actors and actresses whether, of all of the films they have made, they have special favourites, but Ms Bisset was too thoughtful and experienced, and perhaps tactful, to humour a neophyte interviewer, and gave a patient explication of the importance of character growth and self-education in film-making.

"Certain projects, perhaps, but actually, sometimes you like the personal adventure implicit in the making of a particular film, and sometimes you like your part in a film, and sometimes you like the final result. Perhaps you can see battles that you have won, or things you have learned.

"There are so many ways of judging an experience, and I tend to be someone who's a , so I don't reject experiences, I embrace them all. I can see very clearly where I grew, and the irony is that sometimes you don't learn as much on a very well directed film as you do on a film where the director is too busy directing the crew or the traffic or whatever, and you really have to pay attention to your part. In other words, you can sometimes learn more working with less talented people, because you learn to survive.

"I have always watched the 'rushes', and have learned more because I have done so, because you can have all manner of ideas in your head, but they have to end up on the screen. The character has to grow, and the story progress.

"Unless it reaches the screen, and the proper steps are taken to reach the climax of the story, you don't have much to work with. Watching the 'rushes' helps me, and it stops me getting 'tics', and repeating myself. I may recognise something I did two films before, and realise I should cut something out, and find another way to where I need to go. Not everyone likes watching 'rushes', but it makes me work harder, and I don't feel I am watching myself, but watching the progression of the character."

Ms Bisset, was a unique experience, and she got no help from reference to the 'rushes' because, given the distance to the studio laboratories, it was sometimes weeks before the daily film footage got back to the Bermuda set.

"I got a hell of a shock when some of them came back, but anyway, I was thinking about the danger. I truly wondered whether I would survive the film. But there are sometimes walls to climb, and other people may not realise it, but you know within yourself whether there's something you are scared of, and the more scared you are, sometimes, the better."

Ms Bisset was cautious about ascribing specific influence to the many very different types of directors with whom she has worked, although she was very positive about Peter Yates, with whom she made and , a highly-regarded film which starred Steve McQueen, and featured one of the first great movie car chases, through the streets of San Francisco.

"Peter is a particularly civilised person, for a start, and being around people with whom you feel a connection, on many levels, not just a professional one, is very relaxing. Your ears are more open to someone who is not a cantankerous bastard. Peter is a distinguished man, as well as a fine director, and that helped make the work a great pleasure.

"It is always a bit of a psychological balancing act. With directors, I don't get into a lot of discussion. I ask my questions before I go on to the set. I have always felt that to be the best way, for me, because directors are too overwhelmed, there's too much going on, and it's better to sort out any problems before you start.

"Of course, if you really don't know what you are supposed to do, you have to ask a question sometimes. Generally, I just do what I think is right, and if they don't like it, we'll try something else.

"Some actors believe in discussing everything , and you can see that people get muddled. And when the director talks too much on the set, and there's too much going on, you can't fully absorb what they want you to do.

"I don't come in with any preconceived ideas, and although I will have done some preparation, I can go which way the director wants. You also take a tremendous amount off the other actor. You listen to them, and it takes you where you need to go."

Having worked on both sides of the Atlantic, and in mid-Atlantic, Ms Bisset does not believe that there is any great difference in the experience of working on American or European film sets.

"I don't see a big difference. I think it's the same process. It depends on whether the director has a vision. Most of the European directors I have worked with were people like Truffaut and Claude Chabrol and Phillipe de Broca, who worked in a style of film-making that I had to join. That's part of the pleasure, joining the world of a director who has a strong vision.

"Some directors are very good, but they don't have their own vision, really. They may be following a studio's view, or the script is not fully embedded in their psyche. It's different, it's not it will just be a different kind of a film.

"But if you the work of a director, and you want to join their world, it's a lovely thing to be part of. I could never have conceived that I would ever get to work in a Truffaut film. It was astonishing to me, and still is. I had done a lot of films at that point, and I felt like an old pro, and I had worked with a lot of big stars and all that stuff, but it was still so unexpected."

Ms Bisset was widely and enthusiastically praised for her work in Truffaut's , and while she may have been indulging in some false modesty about the likelihood of her working for that ground-breaking the quintessential of the New Wave in the French cinema of the 1960s, she did not feel a stranger in that world.

"I thought that I was going home. I felt that I was going home to what I wanted to do in cinema. I did not expect to get the chance, but I felt ready. I didn't feel I was too young, in fact I felt I was quite mature at that point (28, for the record). I didn't feel that people listened to me very much, but my inner heart was absolutely comfortable to be doing a film with Truffaut, because he was a film-maker I loved, and I knew his work well.

"I didn't know big American productions. I didn't have any background in that, either seeing them or particularly relating to them. I could relate to the experience of being given work, and learning a lot by watching big films being made. I would sit there very quietly, because I was usually playing a fairly small part, with very big stars, but it was an incredible opportunity to learn.

"I asked Truffaut why he cast me, what had he seen me in? He said he had been in Nice, and had an hour and a half to kill, and he had walked into a cinema. I was playing a drug addict in a film called, and he told me he had seen me in an earlier film, , where I played an amphetamine addict, and he cast me (in ) as an American movie star based on my work in these two parts! I was very surprised."

To a visitor, it might seem strange to be part of the charged atmosphere of a film for two or three months. Working long, hard and often distinctly unglamorous days in the closed world of a film set, friendships are made, or the seeds of deeper relationships sown, and then the film wraps and cast and crew go their own ways.

Ms Bisset has become entirely used to stepping into and out of this nomadic world. "Speaking for myself, when I began, I think I gave myself away to the crew much more fully, before I realised what I had to come up with, in terms of having a position of responsibility. I gave away a lot of energy to people, energy which I needed. But there came a point when my roles became more important. and I had to save my energy so that I was for the actual work. I sort of pulled back a bit, and learned to concentrate, and be less

"I was always very friendly, because I always enjoyed the crew, but over the years, the projects that I got interested in became more consuming on some level, even if they were small. So, I had to learn to balance.

"You need a degree of mutual support to have a happy set, and it is so much more fun when everyone is happy to see each other, and it can be a great joy. It may be superficial, but it's also very important. I don't actually think it's as superficial as it looks, and it says a lot about human beings.

"In fact, there's something about being with a group of people who become like family that must be needed in society, because I have watched people who have nothing to do with the film business, but who have become part of the circle for a short period of time, in some place where they don't normally make films, and people become crazy to be a part of this feeling, and they can be truly devastated when the film wraps and people leave.

"There's something about having a work project together. It's not just socialising, it's a mixture of things. On a set, when you share work, and you have the opportunity of seeing people you like, or love, doing what they do best, and you also interchange socially with them, it's very addictive. Sometimes, it really hurts to leave, and sometimes, I am all right with it."

Bisset produced the film in 1981, but she has not been tempted to repeat that adventure, having found the experience stressful and unpleasant. "I found it a very difficult experience, and there were very few actresses doing it at that time. I really had a very 'growing-up' experience with a big studio, and a director who was used to actresses just being actresses, and didn't want me to be involved as producer, even though he came in after I did.

"That aspect wasn't particularly pleasant, although I did enjoy the film a lot. I enjoyed working with Candy Bergman, and I enjoyed the director George Cukor socially, but as a working experience it wasn't a very easy one. He was very autocratic, and very much of another generation."

Ms Bisset found nothing new in the Hollywood screenwriters' recent lawsuit against the television and film studios alleging age bias, or the perennial complaint that actresses find great difficulty maintaining a career past the age of 40.

"This film business, perhaps more so in America than in Europe, has always been about young sexuality. It's not true of theatre, but in America, film audiences are young and they go to the cinema to see the sort of romance or adventure that appeals to them. It's not an intellectual cinema in America.

"But one musn't be too greedy. One wants to be stimulated by the work as long as there is something to give. I think you have to be as flexible as possible. Perhaps you don't get handed the big American productions, but, quite honestly, who would want to be in a lot of them?

"Many of them are just puerile teenage filler, and they're not fascinating to be in. To be used in a part without depth is a frustrating feeling, when you know you have something to give, and the camera just sort of brushes past you, and doesn't get what you have to give.

"Most actresses I know are frustrated, but you have to adapt to the reality. I go and find a small part in something I find interesting, or find an independent film."

Ms Bisset has been a voluntary exile for many years, but does not feel that she has been entirely shorn of her English roots.

"I am not terribly Americanised, but I have certainly been spoiled by America. There are things about America that I like a lot, a certain energy, and I think it has kept me healthier, physically, than if I were in England eating all of my stodge! The minute I am back in England, I fall into all of the bad old eating habits."

Ms Bisset does not deny that, even after more than 30 years in the cornucopia of southern California, she has been known to pine for that strange assortment of eccentric pastes and viscous potions that lurk in the pantries of expatriate Britons.

"Oh, yes. I have the Marmite, and the Bovril and the Heinz Salad Cream, absolutely I do. I don't eat them very often, and I never ate them as a child, because mother brought us up with a slight bias in favour of French foods. But I what everyone else was eating. I wanted Baked Beans, and Crisps, and Heinz Salad Cream, but we always had to have , which was humiliating!"

Ms Bisset arrived in California, the American idea of England was represented by urbane sophisticates like Cary Grant and David Niven. The current personifications of England are more likely to be Ozzy Osbourne, Simon Cowell or Ann Robinson, who are mostly celebrated for coarseness or deliberate rudeness.

Ms Bisset was not perturbed by this apparent vulgarisation, and saw a broader societal change.

"Well, it's certainly different, and I can feel quite judgmental about a lot of things, but the whole of England has just changed tremendously. There are positive things in it, and I wouldn't say that England is not producing men like them anymore.

"I certainly met them, and David Niven was absolute heaven ? a charming, handsome, distinguished man, and I don't think any generation would turn him down! You could introduce him to anybody, and Cary Grant was wonderful too.

"Yes, that sort of deliberate coarseness is 'in', there's no doubt about it, and it is meant to have an edge of humour, but there is a 'chippy' quality to it which is not very attractive. I find it small-minded, personally, but I presume people will get fed up with it eventually. There will be nothing left to be rude about!"

Away from the vagaries of the film industry, Ms Bisset has much to keep herself occupied, but she is particularly fond of another beloved English enthusiasm.

"I love being in my garden. I don't plant a lot of exotic flora, but I do spend a lot of time outside doing manual labour. I am also a great lover of art, in many forms: paintings, textiles. I don't have the talent for painting, but I have a very good sense of colour, a love of visual beauty. Mostly, my interests are with people."

Ms Bisset's more recent work includes a film called and , a film starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who is her god-daughter. But with a wonderful peal of laughter, she confesses, on being asked her next project: "I am unemployed! There are a couple of projects that haven't been seen yet. I have had time to deal with some things in my personal life. I just lost a family member, and my family is dwindling fast, which is very sad. But then I had time to come down here, which has been wonderful. Life's about balance, isn't it?"