I confess. I have had a crush on Isild Le Besco ever since I saw her as a troubled teen in “Girls Can’t Swim” in 2000.

I said hello to her at the Rotterdam Film Festival a few years ago, but our meeting lasted all of five seconds.

On Wednesday, I finally got to spend quality time with the elegant 24-year-old.

She’s been in New York a few weeks now, working on a video-shot romance called “Annette and Her” and introducing another of her movies, “L’Intouchable” (2006), at the Rendez-Vous With French Cinema festival.

Not only did I interview the actress, I ended up as an extra in “Annette and Her” (directed by Haik Kocharian and co-starring Jean-Marc Barr), although it remains to be seen if the footage of the actress and me talking will make the final cut.

Le Besco is a dynamo. She has already appeared in more than 30 features and shorts (she was 8 when she made her debut, in an uncredited bit).

She’s also written, directed and produced films, worked on the stage in Europe and been the subject of a photo show at a New York gallery last month.

You could say her talent is in the genes: Her father is a classical guitarist, her mother and sister are actresses and her brother is a cinematographer.

Le Besco is often called a Scarlett Johansson lookalike, but she couldn’t care less.

“People always need to give you other personalities. When I was younger they said I looked like Isabelle Adjani. Now it’s Scarlett Johansson. Sometimes it’s Brigitte Bardot.”

In “L’Intouchable,” she plays a French woman who travels to India in search of her father.

The director is Benoit Jacquot, who also guided Le Besco in “Sade” (2000) and “A Toute de Suite” (2004).

I try to ask her about her off-screen relationship with Jacquot, but she interrupts: “I don’t answer to these questions.”

So I inquire about her propensity for on-screen nudity. “If a film needs a nude scene and I think it’s good, I don’t mind doing it,” she tells me.

I should stop there, but I feel compelled to ask her about her butt-baring when she was only 16, in “Girls Can’t Swim.”

“I don’t see the point of asking that,” she responds sharply.

So I move on to a safer question: Why, mademoiselle, do you usually play troubled characters?

“I guess that’s what people see in me.” Indeed.

V.A. Musetto is film editor of The Post; vam@nypost.com