Bérénice Bejo Stars in Asghar Farhadi's Film "The Past" PARIS - When Bérénice Bejo talks about her 2012 Oscar loss for her performance in "The Artist," she admits she was disappointed. She is less disappointed that she didn't win than that she didn't lose to Meryl Streep, who won for "The Iron Lady" in the best actress category. It seems that Harvey Weinstein, who bought the French film, decided that Ms. Bejo would have a better chance at an Oscar if he slotted her in the supporting actress category. "The Artist," a largely silent black-and-white film set in early Hollywood, swept up awards for best picture, actor (Jean Dujardin) and director (Michel Hazanavicius, Ms. Bejo's husband). Ms. Bejo, who played a tap-dancing, face-scrunching actress named Peppy Miller, lost to Octavia Spencer ("The Help") in the supporting spot. "When I got the nomination, I said: "This isn't fair. This is not my category," " Ms. Bejo said in English over tea in a cafe in Paris. I should have said no. I would have been so proud to lose to Meryl Streep as best actress. Even today, I'm a little bit upset with Harvey. Now, Ms. Bejo may have a shot - a long one, perhaps - at a nomination for an Oscar in the best-actress category for her role in "The Past," a new drama from the Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi opening on Dec. 20. This Argentine-born actress, 37, wasn't Mr. Farhadi's first choice. He had hoped to work with Marion Cotillard, who backed out because of scheduling conflicts. "While Bérénice and I were promoting our films in the United States, we sometimes bumped into each other in hotel lobbies," Mr. Farhadi said, speaking in Persian through an interpreter. "I thought to myself: "She looks very smart. There is something very warm about her. One of the other things she had going for her is that she was available. He wasn't bothered that she had made her name mainly in comic roles, not drama. "An actor who succeeds in comedies can play any role," he said. When she came to the set, I told her to forget all that she had done before. And that's what she did. In "The Past," Ms. Bejo (pronounced BAY-jo) plays Marie, a French pharmacist caught between an Iranian husband (Ali Mosaffa), who is reluctant to divorce her, and the taciturn lover (Tahar Rahim) she is eager to marry. He has made her pregnant, but he has a depressive wife who attempted suicide and is now in a coma. The logistics were a challenge. Mr. Farhadi, whose 2011 film, "A Separation," won an Oscar for best foreign-language picture, set the story in a working-class Paris suburb and filmed it in French, even though he does not speak the language. Ms. Bejo and the crew took instructions through an interpreter, although Mr. Farhadi speaks passable English. Sometimes the plot got lost in translation. At more than one point, in both French and in the English subtitles, the lover's wife is said to have killed herself rather than attempted suicide. "I really didn't pay attention to this kind of detail," Mr. Farhadi said in an interview. I like confusion. To Ms. Bejo's surprise, she won the best actress award when the film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival last spring. She apparently hadn't focused on the early reviews, like one from The Hollywood Reporter that singled out her "surprisingly dynamic, unsentimental central performance." Variety's review praised her for a "bristling intelligence" and for a "verbal acuity" that might surprise fans of "The Artist." Ms. Bejo decided at a young age to be an actress. At 3, she moved from Buenos Aires to Paris, when her father, a filmmaker, and mother, a lawyer, fled the "dirty war" waged by Argentina's military dictatorship. Her parents were film fanatics, and while growing up, she watched little television but gorged on French and Italian classics and American musicals, animated films and westerns. After some acting classes and a year of college, she set out at the age of 18 on her career, which did not follow a smooth upward trajectory. She trailed one actor boyfriend to Los Angeles in 1999 and lived there for two years. Back in Paris, she took bit parts in television series until, at 23, she acted in her first film, the 2000 comedy "Meilleur Espoir Féminin" ("Most Promising Young Actress"). The next year, she made her American film debut opposite Heath Ledger in "A Knight's Tale." She found herself sleeping on her sister's sofa, and in 2004, without work or a permanent place to live, she followed another actor boyfriend to Brooklyn for six months. "It wasn't poor little actress sleeping on a couch, it was that I was very picky," she said. I turned down a lot of roles. Then came "OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies," a James Bond spoof directed by Mr. Hazanavicius. Mr. Dujardin played the hapless secret agent, and Ms. Bejo was his Egyptian handler. She and the director fell in love when the filming was over. Still, the big roles didn't come easily, and for a while, she was a stay-at-home mother. "I've never been the "It" girl," she said. Bored, she began to learn tap-dancing. Mr. Hazanavicius created the role of Peppy for her. She is currently working on "The Search," a film set in war-torn Chechnya that was written and directed by her husband and co-stars Annette Bening. It tells the story of a relief worker (Ms. Bejo) who forms a bond with a Chechen boy. Ms. Bejo had finished filming on location in Georgia the day before the interview and taken a seven-hour flight to Paris, depositing her two children at their new home in a former printing factory. She turned up with little makeup, her hair still damp from a shower, in a pink pullover and jeans and a rabbit-fur jacket dyed rust red. Despite the good notices for her role in "The Past," she claims to have no chance at an Oscar this time. When she, Mr. Hazanavicius and Mr. Dujardin were nominated for "The Artist," they lobbied hard for months in the United States. She had to overcome her distaste for signing autographs, posing for photographs on red carpets, sitting for interviews and spending more than two hours a day being coifed, dressed and made up. As someone who gets around Paris on bicycle, she hated the Los Angeles car culture. "It was a new world for me, and it was really, really a lot of work," she said. Referring to the César, the French version of the Oscar, that she won for playing Peppy, she said: "In France, you don't do anything. You either win prizes, or you don't. In the U.S., winning prizes is a business. Because of her work commitments, she has not invested time or energy into lobbying for an Oscar this time around, she said, adding, "It's too late for me."