She is a thoroughbred of the Parisian artistic elite: an award-winning actress who trained at the Conservatoire, joined the Comédie Française and has been directed by some of France's thespian greats in plays by Racine and Victor Hugo.
Her husband is a temperamental former footballer who abandoned France but became the doyen of one of the world's sporting institutions.
Together they are M and Mme Eric Cantona and, armed with her intellectual pedigree and his maverick celebrity, they are taking Paris by storm. Later this month, in the illustrious surrounds of the Théâtre Marigny on the Champs-Elysées, the footballer-turned-film star will make his theatre debut in a play directed by Rachida Brakni, his wife, whom he met on a film set in 2002. Keen for a repeat of his critically acclaimed performance in Ken Loach's Looking for Eric, the French media have already billed the play as one of the "theatrical events" of 2010.
Cantona says he is thrilled at the prospect of performing once again in "real time" in front of a live audience. What he wanted from the theatre, he explained on prime-time television last week, was "a relationship, a real excitement, a direct relationship with people".
"If he is apprehensive he doesn't show it," Brakni, 32, told the Observer. "He is someone who is inspired by a challenge. He sets the bar very high and so do I."
But critics have warned there is plenty in the venture to be apprehensive about. Face au paradis (Faced with Paradise) is an untested contemporary play written by Nathalie Saugeon. Cantona's role in it is highly demanding – especially for a theatrical novice. Playing one of only two characters, opposite upcoming young star Lorànt Deutsch, he will be on stage engaged in intensive dialogue for the duration.
Joëlle Gayot, theatre critic for France Culture radio, said the project was laden with risks and the part would leave him "enormously exposed". But, she said, the public would appreciate the fact that he had put himself on the line.
"I think people like him because he takes risks," she said. "I don't think the critics will go to annihilate him."
For Brakni, however, who leapt on the play after having searched for a part that would suit her husband, the risk is a meticulously calculated one. "I wanted to find him a part that would measure up to his talents," she said. "Eric is a very demanding person. He is someone of great rigour, great discipline and great talent."
When he first returned from England, having retired from Manchester United in 1997, such a summary of Cantona's abilities would have been greeted with hilarity. The French may have begrudgingly and belatedly accepted that the boy from Marseille had talent on the pitch, but off it he was viewed as something of a buffoon with a southern accent that Parisian commentators liked to mock.
But after a string of cinematic appearances, Cantona, 43, is finally persuading the French that his artistic gifts extend beyond the confines of a football pitch. Not only can he act, they discovered, but he has cultivated for himself an image as a 21st-century Renaissance man. Last month saw the release of a book of his photography on behalf of the Abbé Pierre Foundation for the world's poor and homeless.
His role as sociopolitical critic has been reinforced by a denunciation of Nicolas Sarkozy and, most recently, the president's controversial debate on "national identity", which Cantona condemned as idiotic.
This political vigour and cultural recognition has allowed the man who not so long ago was shut out of French society to engineer his way back in. Amid the shower of praise that rained down on him in the wake of the release of Loach's film last year, Le Point magazine remarked: "When so many 'retired' sportsmen try and fail to do something else, Cantona deserves his reputation as an artist."
Ahead of the play's opening night on 26 January, critics are speculating about how successful the new Parisian power couple's joint venture will be. "Maybe he'll come a cropper, maybe he won't," said Gayot. "I personally don't think he will because he's got a presence, a fragility. He's not Depardieu, but he does have something."