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Handsome, young and talented. Yet, he doesn't have a big head! He is
returning from five months in Vietnam with Catherine Deneuve. The woman in his life is
named Jacqueline Bisset. Vincent Perez has become "the man we love to hate", as
people would say. Mission impossible, this guy won over the editorial staff of Vogue
Hommes, and everyone he met in town, as if it were staged. He entered wearing the
clothing like a top model, having fun, but with the seriousness of a fashion
professional. At 28 years old, Vincent Perez has found his royal way - in cinema and
theatre, after having pursued many side roads: photography, sculpture, drawing. Raised in
a small Helvetian (Swiss) town, he made a brief passage through the Geneva Conservatory.
At the age of 17 ½, with his head full of dreams, he imagined summits other than those of
the Swiss mountains, and "climbing" to Paris, where he found a good address: The
"Amandieres de Nanterre", Patrice Chereau's place. The work there impassioned
him. "I had insisted that Chereau give me some different work. I had learned
diversity, with Platonov by Chekhov, The Letters of Theo by Van Gogh.
Chereau chose him for his film, Hotel de France. His first significant role,
thanks to Nadine Trintignant, was in La Maison de Jade, based on the book by
Madeleine Chapsal, where he was paired with Jacqueline Bisset. A thunderbolt, they have
been together ever since.
But his "lightning bolt" as an actor hit with Cyrano de Bergerac, in
which he was given the role of Christian. Facing the giant Depardieu, he occupied the
terrain with panache: "Gerard was very generous to me." Who would doubt
Depardieu the magnificent? Barely after completing Cyrano, he even didn't have
time to hang up his cape and sword. Scola was waiting with Capitaine Fracasse,
where he plays the role of a high-ranking Cigognac.
Regis Wargnier offers him a role in Indochine, as an officer in the French
colonies. Five months of filming in Vietnam and Malaysia, with Catherine Deneuve for a
co-star, and an extraordinary screenplay by Louis Gardel, Erik Orsenna and Catherine
Cohen. "The movie was made in a state of grace", he says. It comes out on April
15th. Today, Vincent Perez dreams of doing theater and becoming a writer. He has already
started on a script with Wargnier...
Perez as fashion model
[With special thanks to Janette Sylvian for her translation]
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