Agnes Jaoui has never sat still long enough to take on just one creative role at a time. Her versatility as an artist stems from her ability to blur the boundaries between fields. She started turning heads as a playwright and a stage actress, working for the Théatre des Amandiers along with long-time partner, co-writer and co-star Jean-Pierre Bacri on plays like Family Resemblances. In 1996, Bacri and Jaoui adapted it into a film by the same name, in which they also co-starred. In 2000, Jaoui would direct, co-write and act in The Taste of Others, which went on to be the highest grossing comedy in France that year. Plus, she’s a classically trained singer, having released two critically acclaimed albums of bossanova, fado and other Latin-flavored music. Her latest film, Let it Rain, is a witty battle of the sexes and opens at Lincoln Plaza and the Angelika Film Center beginning June 18.

At 45, she’s already worked with everybody from Patrice Chereau to Alain Resnais, and she cites Resnais as being a big influence on the way she strives to establish a rapport with her actors. “He taught me [that] you can obtain things by showing a lot of passion and respect from your actors by creating a trustful relationship with them,” she explained. “I do the same [thing]: I meet each actor one by one and I try to reassure them.”

While Jaoui forgoes a distinct series of visual cues of her own so as to better draw attention to her actors, she also believes that sound is a more important cinematic component than visuals. “Music, in my opinion, my tastes, can spoil a movie. For instance, Billy Elliot, a movie that I like, I hated the music. It really spoiled for me the pleasure of the movie… Music is a part of the movie, but not only the music, the silences also. These are really the moments I adore.”

Similarly, Canta, Jaoui’s first album of music with El Quintet Oficial, was inspired by her own love of the music in Spanish director Pedro Almódovar’s films. “I’ve been to Cuba, and I met some musicians there. As you may know, Cuban people want to escape, very often just to earn some money and in that case, to come back for their families. I helped theses musicians to come to Paris and, after a while, we started to sing together… It’s like a calling for me—to be somebody else, to sing in another language.”

One of the main thematic leitmotifs in Jaoui’s films is similarly the need to break past the prejudices that come with differences in one’s background, whether it’s the class warfare in The Taste of Others or the hints of racial and sexual tension in Let it Rain. “I’m very passionate about the difficulty to change, not society, but yourself and the power of determinism… and how to escape that, how to make your own way.”

Still, Jaoui warns viewers not to read her films as autobiography, even if Let it Rain’s Agatha Villanova, a strident politician and career woman, does seem to struggle against the same prejudices as Jaoui. “I guess some people have that image from me, but I’ve also built it (for myself). A lot of people confuse my characters and me. An image is an image.”