She's a woman who can give one pause. Literally. "Robin is so ..." Long pause, as Anthony Minghella - writer/director of films, including "The English Patient," "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "Cold Mountain" - struggles to come up with just the right words to describe her. "I was reminded of how opaque she is, so full of secrets," he says. "It's almost as if what she's saying isn't what she's thinking." He's speaking of Robin Wright Penn, the winsome actress who burst on the scene in 1987, with one less name (she was Robin Wright back then) and no less than the title role in "The Princess Bride." The beloved cult classic established her career. She later paired up with rowdy boy-turned-powerhouse actor Sean Penn, had children (a girl, Dylan, and boy, Hopper - now teenagers), left L.A. (the Penns live north of San Francisco) and ... then what? She somehow fell off the radar, just slightly.

"It's just happenstance," she says. "Just some great [roles] that happened to fall in succession."

In "Breaking and Entering" the 40-year-old actress portrays Liv, who can't help feeling like a single mom, though she and her teenage daughter live with Liv's longtime boyfriend, Will (played by Jude Law). The daughter's a handful (up all night, shunning the color yellow - bedeviled by some form of autism), which doesn't help. Nor does Will's obsession with work.
Thieves keep breaking into his new office in the middle of a dodgy section of London. One night he catches sight of a thief, an agile teen who leaps from rooftops, and follows him home. Will ends up meeting - and falling for - the boy's mother (Juliette Binoche), a Serbian refugee. That's when things really get complicated.

A key moment for Penn is a close-up shot when she faces Binoche for the first time. The two women stand on opposite sides of a table, Binoche, with her dark, weary curves, and Penn all staccato-straight lines and edges. The camera holds on Penn briefly, her eyes soft with a look that seems to say a dozen things at once.

"With Juliette, you know exactly what's in her heart - she's like a gusher," says Minghella. "With Robin it's the opposite," he says. "It's as if you're seeing her through a prism or fractured lens. I'm so in admiration of her as an actor, and as a person she's a joy to work with, but it's hard to know what she's really thinking."

Born in Dallas, she started out as a model and was soon cast in the soap opera "Santa Barbara." Then came Buttercup, the poor Princess Bride, which got her noticed in Hollywood. She starred in the 1990 film "State of Grace" with Sean Penn, and by the time shooting wrapped the two were an item.

They had babies first, then married in 1996. A month later came the 911 call.

She'd been carjacked in their driveway in Santa Monica, stalling just long enough to extract the children, then ages 3 and 5, who were strapped in the back seat.

"She was amazing," Sean Penn later told Entertainment Weekly. "They played it on the news and I heard her. Her voice was so calm and clear."
Robin Wright Penn told a reporter: "If I was alone it would've been less harrowing."
A year later, the Penns moved north.

"I had children to raise, not have a nanny raise them," she says now, sitting in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Manhattan's Battery Park. Her kids, not the films, were her priority, she says. "Now they're teenagers and they're like, 'Can you please go make a movie?'" she says, laughing.
She doesn't regret a minute she spent with them, or the films (such as "Jurassic Park") she turned down to be with them. "I wouldn't have done [those films] anyway," she says.

"I had a 103-degree fever," says Penn, recalling the day's shoot. "I was sweating, seeing double and just dying to get in bed." With cameras rolling, she explains, Minghella just leaned in and said softly, "'You understand her. You understand her sacrifice.'"
Penn switches to first person, and it's unclear if she's speaking as Liv, or herself.

"I totally get who you are as a woman, as a mother," Penn says, noting how far Binoche's character goes to protect her child. "I would do the same thing," she adds.

"That's one of the greatest reaction shots I've ever seen," Minghella recalls. "I used to stare at it in the cutting room."

Penn's character is all there, in that moment, he says.

"It feels like you're getting a glimpse of the secret, even if you don't know what the secret is."