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Meeting the press on Sunday after the Saturday night ceremony, Quentin Tarantino and other members of the jury said they couldn't get Cheung's performance out of their minds. One of them, Kathleen Turner, regretted that there were no other strong roles for women among the festival films.

When Cheung last came to Cannes, she was cast as a sinuous figure in Wong Kar-Wai's 2000 film "In the Mood for Love," set in 1960s Hong Kong. She wore exquisite dresses, designed by William Chang, and went through the paces of a mysterious heroine. The best actor award went to her co-star, Tony Leung, and many said that she should have won best actress.

In "Clean," Cheung plays Emily, a desperately unhappy woman, stuck in violent conflict with her rock 'n' roll singer husband. When he overdoses on heroine, Emily goes from tattered and bejeweled pop princess to broken bird - a woman in an orange ski cap, pushed out in the cold and deprived of her son.

Cheung says the heroine of "In the Mood for Love" didn't really resemble her: "Kar-Wai shoots and writes at the same time," she says, "he takes certain traits of one's character, then the parts are tailor-made for that person. He transforms people into his fantasy. Olivier takes a person for what he really is."

The actress, who was a model at 18 and performed martial arts in Jackie Chan's "Police Story," is no longer interested in acting as a silhouette. In Hong Kong, she is a star, pursued, even harassed, by a hungry celebrity press; she has spent months hiding from telescopic lenses, in a slow burn of frustration.

Assayas revealed her mettle, tapped her intensity, for the part of Emily. The couple, now divorced, were determined to make "Clean" together. Assayas wrote the screenplay for her, a film in which she isn't just a Chinese woman playing a Western part, because in some ways, he says, Maggie, born in Hong Kong and raised in London, is very Western. "Olivier knows how I feel," she says. He made a film radically different in tone, theme and pacing from his last, "Demonlover," which took place in a cold world of industrial spying.

Cheung, who had already acted in films by Chan, Johnny To and Tsui Hark, as well as Wong, was already a legend before Assayas met her, and when he cast her in "Irma Vep" (1996), it was to play her own part as the famous Maggie Cheung coming to act in a French film.

In "Clean," she plays a modern woman in a modern melodrama. Some critics have compared the movie to Douglas Sirk's 1959 film "Imitation of Life," but Cheung has no soft curves or weepy moments - she is a fighting heroine. "I always feel like a foreigner wherever I go," she says.

"Clean" opens in Canada and moves to Paris, where Emily waits on tables at a huge Chinese restaurant in Belleville run by her uncle. "She's a wannabe diva, trying to adapt," Cheung says, "and suddenly there she is, serving canard laqué to people." Few friends are left from her celebrity days.

When she finally spends a weekend with her little boy, she takes him to the zoo and almost loses him there, for she has so little protective instinct. What makes the performance strong is how she treats the boy, never acting maternal. "I know that Emily doesn't know how to be a mom, but she's trying just to get to know him."

Cheung now speaks good French in her gravelly, musical voice, but the intonations escape her. "French is still much more difficult for me than English. I can improvise in English, but I can't in French. Sometimes, I didn't catch what the other actors were saying." Assayas caught her blank moments, her spurts of energy. "Olivier let me find the part on my own."

This has been a difficult year. She was supposed to star in Wong's much awaited "2046," a sequel to "In the Mood for Love," presented in competition during the final days of the festival. But the film took four years to make and she spent a year waiting.

She was to have played the same character as "In the Mood for Love" - "I wasn't that keen on the idea," she says, "but I was also supposed to play the robot, the woman of the future, and I really wanted to play that part." She had to leave the film, however, because Assayas was ready to shoot.

Although "special appearance by Maggie Cheung" figures in the credits, "2046" stars Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, Carina Lau and Faye Wong opposite Leung - all actors that she has worked with. There is little left of Cheung: one fugitive shot of her lying on a bed, another of a woman closing a door; "2046" won no awards.

Wong launched her - and a generation of actors - with his debut "As Tears Go By" (1988), inspired by Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets." He cast her in roles that made her sought out to the best directors in Hong Kong, and she always said that he was her favorite director.

"This morning, I looked at the news," she says, "and I saw myself on screen - I didn't smile once when I got the prize. I was in conflict because I felt so honored, yet I know it's the beginning of another cycle. I feel the way I did before I left Hong Kong. I'm really happy, it's one of the most precious moments, but I didn't smile, and I've always smiled.

"It's as if somebody gave me a diamond necklace. I wonder what is expected in return. But I don't think that will keep me from being a happy person. Now, perhaps I'll have more choices, I hope."

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