Radha Mitchell has a way of melting the armor of knights and other noble men. Take Sir Mick Jagger, who helped her out of a jam a few years back: The actress, an Australian citizen, had arrived in Nice for the Cannes Film Festival without her visa. "They put me in a security room at the airport, and there was Mick," she says, still sounding mortified. "I introduced myself, and somehow he took mercy on me. He spoke to the officials in French and they let me go."

Then there's Woody Allen, who was so besotted by her screen presence—"luminous," "lyrical," and "delicate" are words critics typically use to describe Mitchell in films like Man on Fire and Finding Neverland—that he cast her in Melinda and Melinda (she played both) without even meeting her.

A few minutes with Mitchell, 34, is all it takes to get the drill. It's not just the surfer-girl body or those gray eyes that glint like a winter storm. Even in the lobby of a stuffy business hotel near her home in Venice, California, Mitchell exudes a gleaming intensity that brings to mind swami-level yoga. In fact, she has just returned from India, where she spent three weeks stretching, meditating, and generally living up to the name her hippie fashion-model mother gave her (which translates from the Hindi as "queen of love"). "Being in India is always a huge life boost," she says. "I met yogis who meditate to the point of levitation."

Little miracles are also the subject of her latest film, Henry Poole Is Here, a tender comedy about a dying man (Luke Wilson) and the woman (Mitchell) whose love makes his last days bearable. "Radha is spectacularly human," says director Mark Pellington. "One glance from her contains a little of everything: desire, heartbreak, joy, mischief. It's hard not to fall in love with her."

But Mitchell wields her powers gently. When she's not working, she's probably either in the lotus position or tooling barefoot around Venice on her beach cruiser. And while she enjoys making films, she tries not to let her career get in the way of other passions like writing and gardening.

"One of the most beautiful things about Asia is how they take the long view," Mitchell says. "Here we talk about having a one-year plan or a five-year plan. There it's the hundred-year plan, or even a thousand years. It helps you live more expansively when you see yourself as part of something infinite. I like the idea of enduring a long time."