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Oscar-winning French actor Juliette Binoche could have settled for Hollywood stardom. Instead, she is putting the spotlight on human rights injustices in Iran.

Actor, poet, painter, dancer: these are all real-life roles that Juliette Binoche has performed with varying degrees of success or, at least, recognition. But this year it is as a human rights campaigner that the 46-year-old Oscar-winning star of The English Patient has drawn perhaps most headlines.

Just recently hers was one of the celebrity names attached to the international appeal to halt the stoning to death of Mohammadi Ashtiani, the 43-year-old Iranian mother found guilty of adultery. Ashtiani had already been lashed 99 times and held in prison for five years, after confessing under torture to having affairs with two men.

Binoche was not the only actor to defend Ashtiani (Emma Thompson, Colin Firth and Robert De Niro also put their names to the campaign), but she was probably the one from whom the authorities in Iran least wanted to hear. As things stand, the woman who ma... >>>