Isabelle Huppert calls best actress Oscar nod 'hard to believe'

— -- Isabelle Huppert is having one amazing awards season.

The "Elle," star has already won the New York Film Critics award, the L.A. film critics award, the Golden Globe for best actress and she’s nominated for an Oscar.

Huppert’s role in the psychological thriller is considered to be one of the top performances of the year.

That may come as a surprise to some not familiar with the French actress' work, but she has more than 100 films under her belt. Some consider Huppert one of the greatest living actresses.

"It’s hard to believe, actually," Huppert said in a recent appearance on ABC News' "Popcorn with Peter Travers." "On one hand, you want your work to be recognized. And you are happy when people get what you do. But on the other hand, it’s always such a surprise when it happens."

Huppert teamed up with director Paul Verhoeven, also the creative force behind "RoboCop" and "Basic Instinct." In the film, she plays the role of woman who is raped by a masked man, but refuses to become a victim. Instead, she takes matters into her own hands with stunning results.

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"She’s not a victim. Nor is she the classical avenger like the James Bond girl, more following the male pattern, taking a gun and shooting the guy," Huppert, 63, told Peter Travers. "It’s a little more subtle, more perverse. But even those adjectives are irrelevant to explain how she behaves. It’s more complex. She wants to understand more about herself."

Surprisingly, Huppert received little direction in playing the character in the film, saying Verhoeven gave her complete freedom as to how she’d portray the role.

"We never said a word about the work, never," she told Peter Travers. "We never said one word that was an explanation about the character. It’s like taking acting as a piece of sculpture that you will shape the way you want. And [Verhoeven] really gave me that big piece of work like an unshaped form and he let me shape it the way I wanted all the way through. And that gave me such freedom and such confidence and such creativity and such imagination. If you have someone in the way all the time saying, 'Oh no, maybe you should do a bit of this or a little bit of that,' that wouldn't be nice for me."

Be sure to watch the full interview in the video above.