Anne Wiazemsky was a 17-year-old nonprofessional when Robert Bresson asked her to play the leading role in "Au Hasard Balthazar," the 1966 film that is now widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of that French director. (It is returning, in a newly restored and freshly subtitled print, to Film Forum tomorrow.)

"When I first met him, I was very much impressed and fell very much under his charm," Ms. Wiazemsky recalled, speaking in French from her home in Paris. "Because, even if he was an older man, he was really very, very handsome. He spoke very softly, with a slight stutter, and that made me laugh — the seriousness of his speech, the beauty of this man, and then his little stutter. That made me feel at ease with him right away."

Ms. Wiazemsky met Bresson through the actress Florence Delay, who (under the name of Florence Carrez) had played the central role in Bresson's 1962 film "Trial of Joan of Arc." Bresson cast Ms. Wiazemsky immediately, and given her ethereal, angelic beauty, it is not difficult to see why he replaced another actress who had already been selected for the role.

"She lost the film because of me," she said, "and I still feel a pang of regret for that unknown girl."

During the filming, "I lived with him, I ate with him away from the crew," Ms. Wiazemsky recalled. "I was his prisoner, but a happy one." Bresson, who liked to refer to his actors as "models," militated against conventionally expressive film acting. He liked his performers to be as neutral and noninterpretive as possible. "I was already what he was looking for," she said, "because I naturally have a very flat voice. He never had to direct my line readings as he had to, a great deal, with the others. And so I did very few takes compared with the other actors, 5 or 6 instead of 50 or 60.

"I was just emerging from adolescence," Ms. Wiazemsky said, "and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. It was very reassuring to be in the hands of someone who seemed to know everything. And when I decided to continue as an actress, it was largely because of the pleasure that experience gave me — of being an instrument in someone else's hands, at the service of someone else's desire."