2023-09-08 10:14:00
President of the Revelation jury at the Deauville festival, Mélanie Thierry has established herself for several years as a miraculous actress, who radiates on film. Meeting on the boards of Deauville.
« I want chicken ».
Mélanie Thierry: It was my first line in an advert, I must have been 13 years old. You have to start well! I don’t know if that guided my career… It was a chance opportunity offered to me and my mother’s desire to offer me a different destiny. But I never told myself that this might be a possible future…
How long have you been a model?
It was quite brief, I would say four years. With certain photographers like Peter Lindbergh or Paolo Roversi, it was something other than making fashion or selling clothes. Besides, I never sold clothes, I had neither the dimensions nor the proportions. I was a small child in a world where I had nothing to do. Perhaps I was selling youth, an emotion.
You started cinema around fifteen years old ?
I have no knowledge of this environment, I am not from the inner circle, I do not have the codes, I am not a bourgeoise. As I am curious and persevering, I met some great people and there were things that spoke to me.
And the theater?
I’ve done very little, but I have a passion for theater. I started at 20 years old in Crime and Punishment, directed by Robert Hossein, but for some, Hossein was too popular. I had never been to the theater in my life! I thought it was going to be the start of everything for me but I didn’t know that people in the business looked down on Robert’s shows. Then I did The Old Blonde Jewby Amanda Sthers, a wonderful show with Jacques Weber, and finally Baby Dollwith Xavier Gallais.
there is a before and an following Pain ?
Yes. This film is an encounter with a role and a director. Meeting Emmanuel Finkiel was obvious; there was a real symbiosis between us. He liked to film me, I understood where he was taking me. We had already shot I’m not a bastard and I loved his way of working. My admiration for him only grew. The film is magnificent.
It continued with the series In therapy and the film by the Larrieu brothers, Tralala.
I loved these experiences. I’m growing up, I’m finally letting go of the image of Lolita that was attached to me and which had become a burden, as if I didn’t have the right to be anything else. But there are years when you can refuse a film, others not. Now I can deploy myself, I like how the directors envision me. For In therapy, which we shot very quickly, I had not at all anticipated when the emotion would come out. Sometimes the emotion overwhelmed me because there was no longer any control.
You are president of the jury at the Deauville festival.
We have an eclectic selection with rich, different proposals. We are immersed in America, its splendor, its neuroses, its eccentricities, with young directors, many of whom are women. Me, I’m rather old school and my tastes take me towards Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, George Cukor… I like champagne bubble comedies.
And your American experiences?
There weren’t that many of them. I am well aware of not having acted in the best films of Spike Lee or Terry Gilliam, but I loved being part of one of their creations, of having had this moment of life with them.
Mélanie Thierry will soon be on screens in Suddenly alone of Thomas Bidegain, et Captives by Arnaud des Pallières, presented in Deauville.
By Marc Godin
Photo: Camille Fermon / Deauville American Cinema Festival
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