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You’ve appeared in two
features by Francis Leclerc. Are you his muse?
Ah! Well, I don’t have the main role in Un été sans point ni coup sûr.
I may not be his muse but let’s say we get on well.
In
Un été sans point ni coup sûr you play a baseball coach. Was it
an opportunity to realise a boyhood dream?
When I was young I played baseball. I’ve never been a great fan of the
sport, but I liked to play it. It was never a dream to play a coach. In
the story that Francis showed me there happened to be a trainer and he
suggested that I played him. I thought that, yes, I could help the story by
playing this guy.
It was also an
opportunity to play a role you’ve never played before.
Yes, in a way. However, as far as I’m concerned, General Dallaire, whom
I played in Shake Hands with the Devil, is a sort of coach, albeit a
bit more complex.
How do you create your
characters?
That depends on the character. Each role has its own needs. There are
those that that are more demanding, which bring me to professions or
settings I don’t know too well, so they require more research than those
where the interpretation comes instinctively. Otherwise, I like to take my
time when I work to accumulate as much information as possible, be it
intellectual, visual or sensory, on a character, a story or a setting. I
only fix the character when the camera begins to roll. I leave all avenues
open until the last minute.
During last year you
have appeared in several films. How do you manage to roll out all these
productions?
That’s just how it worked out. They fitted into my schedule. For
example, the filming of Un été sans point ni coup sûr, which lasted
10 days, fell in between two shoots, before The Timekeeper and after
Truffe.
I often get offered
projects I like. You don’t know which are going to be financed, so you say
yes to all the ones that interest you. In addition, quite often you make
arrangements with people you know. This year, six projects got the green
light. So I found myself rolling out six films, one after the other. It was
rock ‘n’ roll! Now, I’m ready to crash out on holiday. That’s essential!
What is it that
motivates you to accept or decline a role?
Different reasons. Certainly, right from the start, that the screenplay
is important enough for me. I judge if the story speaks to me, if it’s
worth the effort of bringing it to the screen. <<laughs>> After that I
turn my attention to the people I’m going to work with. Often, if I don’t
know the director, I ask to meet him. I’ll rarely accept until I see the
actors I’m going to work with, but generally speaking I keep myself up to
date.
We’ve recently seen
you in the drama Emotional Arithmetic alongside world renowned actors
Susan Sarandon and Christopher Plummer. Soon, we’ll see you in the French
co-production Mesrine: L’instinct de mort. Do your selection
criteria betray a desire to lead an international career?
No. If that was what I wanted I would have done it a long time ago. As
I can speak and read English, I read scripts both in English and in French,
that’s all.
Both in the theatre (Blasté)
and the cinema (Truffe, Némésis), we often see you with your partner,
Céline Bonnier. Is this deliberate?
No, it’s not arranged. There’s no pressure on my part or anything else
whatsoever. I have too much respect for the writers, crew and directors to
impose myself on a cast. People offer the roles to Céline and me. For
example, it was director Kim Nguyen who offered us each a role in his film
Truffe. |