It is in the games of his childhood, as here in the garden of the Norman family house, that the interpreter of the psychiatrist of the series “in therapy”, on Arte, sees the origin of his vocation.
by valentin perez
“I must be 10 years old in this photo, and I am surrounded by my two little sisters, Valérie, who is now veterinarian in Le Havre, and Sophie -Noëlle, dentist near Geneva – she had on the eye A dressing to correct his view, which gives him an air of a corsair. We were just playing in a boat, in the garden of our parents, in Auffay, in Seine-Maritime, a town with a collegiate church, where they always live. The old swollen curtains served as sails. Wooden boards, recovered in a adjoining hangar, an old tannery, had to compose the front of the ship.
Not far away, outside the frame, was planted a hazelnut in which I often made huts and it is likely that the hut of the moment was considered then as the island which had to be achieved and conquer. I wear a M43 type M43 jacket, recovered from my maternal grandfather and, on the head, the sub-lieutenant calot of my father, who made twenty-eight months in the Algerian war.
I very often think back to the way we played at that time. I deeply believe that it is at the base of my desire for theater and cinema. At the time, I served mass as a choir. And, with my friends, one of our games was to reproduce it. Once we had defined who would be the priest, what he was interested in playing was not the preaching or the songs, but the communion, this sacred moment in which we were able to believe. Tenous moments, because often the magic broke: such a want no longer wanted, another wanted to change the game, and then everything collapsed …
a passion for analysis
When it happens in the game, even today, it’s terrible – the same pain. In August, for example, I was taken from a huge hole on stage. I played a count, in costume and hat, in a staging, man and gallant man, of Eduardo de Filippo. Suddenly, my partner missed a replica, I was disoriented, until the total vacuum seizes me: white!
A thousand ideas have passed through my head, and especially the feeling of being totally in the west, fragile, just a poor man lost. I tried to improvise, but I got out of stage, flageolant. Child or adult, when you lose the thread and belief in the game, everything vacillates.
I think my acting performances have never really dazzled my parents, my sisters or my brother: it was above all me that he saw, not the character. But recently, with Opening Night, by Cyril Test, in the theater and the series in therapy, I thought I felt that they had been more. The analysis has been passionate about me for a long time and I like to work on neuroses – a term, however, very pejorative in my family!
I remember very well the day I phoned my parents, at 19, to tell them that I stopped my math studies to try my luck in the cinema. They had already noticed that I liked to go to the cinema, the weekend in our village or to Dieppe, that I appreciated Bourvil, of Funès, Le Corniaud, by Gérard Oury, and that I was mounting film clubs in the Bahuts . I managed to calm them down by insisting on the technical aspect of cinema. I told them about Henri Verneuil, a former arts and trades, like my grandfather.
It was by this manufacturer’s side that I attacked, I did not imagine not becoming an actor. My mother supervised my first accessory contract, on a TV movie with Yves Rénier, the Maupas, an attempted public television, in 1980, to glorify nuclear. I had managed to negotiate the union rate: 2,800 francs per week, it was huge! When I got it, everyone blew. And I was proud to be independent. “