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The French actor and
director, Vincent Perez, has come to spend a few days to
Maritius to discover the charms of the south, and more specifically,
those of the Telfair Hotel. Thanks to the complicity of Vanessa Béchard,
marketing director of the establishment, we have been able to meet the actor
who refuses to be eternally stereotyped as the leading sex symbol of French
cinema, whose physique and roles make it easy to forget that he has a solid
dramatic background. At forty-plus, Vincent Perez still has the presence and
charisma of a young lead, a quality that has long confined him to French
cinema. But, as he often said during Friday’s rambling conversation, he’s
not only a beautiful face, but a man of cinema who, after becoming a
successful actor and starring in several French cinema classics, turned more
and more toward direction. Perhaps to offer to others the roles that he was
often not offered and which he now writes, often in collaboration with his
wife, Karine Silla.
It’s the very start of the career of Vincent Perez, who seems chosen by the
gods when it comes to luck and career-defining meetings. The chosen one was
not always totally all right with this. “Yes, I’ve had a lot of luck in my
career, without doubt. But you have to know when to seize an opportunity,
know when to go for it, make yourself available, know when to wait for the
moment, make good choices and reject others. I’ve had luck of course, and a
bit of talent, but more than anything I’ve worked hard, and I’ve known how
to make decisions. It took a lot of courage to leave an institution like the
Paris Conservatory and go and apply to the Amandiers Theatre, directed by
Patrice Chéreau in Nanterre. At acting school I learnt that the world
doesn’t owe you anything and that in this profession, you don’t get it
through luck, but through work, work and more work, and that talent is all
about sweat. For example, if I hadn’t decided to learn English when I was
23, I would never have been able to film in the United States. Nobody there
would have thought of putting me forward for a role if I hadn’t been able to
speak English. That’s how I got the lead role in The Crow 2, and how
I recently filmed a version of Frankenstein for American television.
It’s true that I’ve had a lot of fantastic opportunities but behind that
there’s a lot of hard work”.
Cyrano de Bergerac, an international success, made Vincent Perez into
the top young leading man in French cinema by far, given many roles as the
seducer, often in costume dramas and epics. He became the cinematic heir to
Gérard Philippe and to Jean Marais, by remaking some of their great roles,
from Captain Fracasse to Fanfan la
Tulipe to Le Bossu. When he wasn’t playing action heroes,
it was his good looks that made him valuable in those productions where he
played seducers. On the big screen, he seduced the most beautiful of
actresses, from Catherine Deneuve (Indochine) to Jaqueline Bisset (The
House of Jade), passing through Isabelle Adjani (La
Reine Margot), Kim Basinger (I
Dreamed of Africa), Sophie Marceau (Fanfan),
Fanny Ardant (Le Libertin) and Penelope
Cruz (Fanfan la Tulipe).
“It’s true, I’ve acted in a few French cinema classics, which have sold a
million tickets the world over, like Cyrano de Bergerac, Indochine,
Fanfan la Tulipe, Le Bossu. But it’s important to realize at
the same time that an actor has a hard job with highs and lows, more lows
than the public ever sees. You have to know how to keep it in perspective,
and it’s not always easy, even if you’re a well-known actor with some big
hits behind you”.
“At acting school I learned that the world doesn’t
owe you anything and that in this profession, you don’t get it through luck,
but through work, work and more work, and that talent is all about sweat”.
But Vincent Perez owes the most beautiful role of his career so far to a
character who has nothing to do with his image as a seductive young lead. A
character the very opposite of those he is often asked to play,
that of Viviane, the transsexual in Those Who
Love Me Take The Train, by Patrice Chéreau.
A layered character that allowed him to challenge his trademark image of a
handsome actor. An undertaking to which he was resolutely committed for
several years. “It’s often forgotten that before I was a beautiful face, I
was a stage actor more than anything else. I’ve
always wanted to try different things as an actor,
and certainly to challenge my image as a handsome hunk, as a young lead with
longevity. From this starting point was born the character of Viviane, the
transsexual that I play in Those Who Love Me Take The Train. The
story behind the creation of the character is interesting. I had photos
taken of me dressed up and made up like a woman just to amuse myself, to see
the effect that it would have. Then I showed them to Patrice Chéreau, who
started to write Those Who Love Me… and who wanted to give me a role
in it. Initially, he didn’t recognize me in the photos, but afterwards, he
kept them. It’s from those photos that the character of Viviane, one of the
best of my career, was written. The role was a huge risk for me as an actor
because instead of challenging my trademark image, I could, if my
interpretation was bad, make a fool of myself like never before. When the
film came out, the left-wing intellectual critics who didn’t like me much
because I don’t have a good profile, were obliged
to recognize that I wasn’t just a beautiful face, but an actor with things
to say and to show.
The film, which was entered into competition at the Cannes Film Festival,
made it clear that Vincent Perez wasn’t just a young lead, but an actor of
substance. It opened doors for him in Hollywood and got him the leading role
in the fantasy film The Crow where he took up the character created
by Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee – who had been killed during the making of
the film.
Since, Vincent Perez has become one of the few French actors to work in the
United States without being stuck in the role of the French lover, and who
is given roles of real substance.
Since 1992, Vincent Perez has added another string to his artistic bow:
direction. He started with short films of four to eight minutes before
directing, in 2002, his first full-length feature:
Peau d'ange. Produced by Luc Besson and co-written with Karine
Silla, the film, presented at a number of international festivals, benefited
from a strong critical eye, and revealed the real temperament of a director.
Qualities which encouraged Luc Besson to entrust the new director with the
American remake of a Japanese-style fantasy thriller with a dose of manga,
The Secret. Vincent Perez has just finished filming it with David
Duchovny, hero of the television series The X Files, in the leading
role. “More and more, I feel I’m a director, I have no more desire to be on
the other side of the camera”.
Vincent Perez avows he has no more desire to be on the other side of the
camera. “I have a few offers as an actor, but more and more I’m leaning
towards production. I’m a little frustrated by my acting career right now,
nobody’s offering me anything interesting, and I’m searching for something
else. More and more, I feel I’m a director, I have no more desire to be on
the other side of the camera. At the moment I’m working on writing a
screenplay in the style of a children’s story. I hope that it will be my
next film in the role of director”.
But a strong character would be capable of giving him the desire to return
to acting. Like the one that an American producer has just offered him. “I
dream of interpreting the character that an American producer has offered
me, but which is, for the moment, a project without financing and without
even a director. It’s a film in the style of Charlie Chaplain, the actor who
gave me the desire to do cinema. It’s a screenplay about the life of a clown
in a concentration camp for Jewish children during the Second World War.
It’s a comic-tragic role relying more on the talent of the actor than on his
physical appearance”. And it’s another way for Vincent Perez to repeat that
he is not just a beautiful face.
[Kindly translated by Steff Stronge] 
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