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JUST because she's 60 years old doesn't mean that Charlotte Rampling is mellowing.
The legendary actress - who startled audiences in movies like "The Damned," "The Night Porter," "The Verdict" and "Max Mon Amour" (in which she goes to bed with a chimp!) - is once again pushing the envelope.
In "Heading South," out here July 7, she plays a French-lit professor in Boston who yearly travels to Haiti to pay for sex with young black studs. She even offers a glimpse of bare breast.
But that's nothing. Just three years ago, she did full-frontal nudity in "Swimming Pool" - and looked quite hot, let it be noted.
"I lose interest if things get too easy," the star explains about her choices during a brief visit to New York last week.
At one point in "Heading South," her character, Ellen, says: "I'm crazy about sex and love." Does this go for Rampling, too?
"No," says the actress. "And I wouldn't tell you anyway."
For the record, Rampling has been married twice and now lives in Paris with "a third man," her business consultant, Jean-Noel Tassez.
Also this year, she was in the Sharon Stone flop "Basic Instinct 2," which she has yet to see.
"It was sort of fun to be in a big American film, because I'm usually in European movies."
Of her 70 films, she's probably best known for Liliana Cavani's "The Night Porter" (1974). She plays a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp who has an S&M relationship with a German officer, portrayed by Dirk Bogarde.
The film includes the iconic scene in which Rampling, wearing a hat and topless except for a pair of suspenders, sings a Marlene Dietrich song for lustful Nazi officers.
After working as a model, British-born Rampling's first role was an uncredited water-skier in "The Knack, and How to Get It" in 1965. Two years later, she made a name for herself in "Georgy Girl."
She admits to a certain fondness for Gallic men (her second husband was French composer Jean-Michel Jarre) because "they like women."
When I suggest that most men like women, she adds: "But they like women in a French way."
* On Thursday, I head for a film festival in the historic Czech spa town Karlovy Vary. Cine File returns July 16.
V.A. Musetto is film editor of The Post. Vam@nypost.com
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