“I don’t want to miss the start of the session!” For Claude Lelouch, every day is a film… and there is no question for him of letting the slightest minute pass. In an interview for the Sunday newspaper (edition of February 27, 2022), the 84-year-old director, who lives between Paris and next to Deauville, in Villerville, where he owns a mansion, explains that he sleeps very little. “I open one eye between 5 and 6 a.m. in summer, between 6 and 7 a.m. in winter“.
A rhythm of sleep all its own! “I only need five or six hours a night, but I multiply fifteen minute naps“, he says, which allows him to optimize his days and especially his weekends, during which his grandchildren and his wife, Valérie Perrin, are with him at the manor. And it seems that these last don’t really have the same rhythm as him! Indeed, he takes advantage of the interview to slip a light tackle to the one who has shared his life for more than fifteen years. “My children and my grandchildren, who often join me in Normandy for the weekend, sleep a lot… I see how much they are missing! My wife too“. It must be said that Claude Lelouch has a very large family!
The director, married several times, has seven children from five different women, whose first names all begin with the letter S: Simon, Sarah, Salomé (raised by Pierre Arditi) Shaya, Sabaya, Sachka and Stella are between 53 and 24 years old and some followed their father down the path of comedy. Others, not at all: his son Sachka is a chicken breeder!
But even if he has to let them sleep more often than him, Claude Lelouch is very attached to this tribal spirit, he who also likes to make choral films, with many characters. His latest feature film, in this spirit, was released in 2021 but he is already preparing for the future: Love is better than life will see the arrival of two sequels, filmed in a few months and which will be released in 2023.
“I conceive this trilogy as a family album, he confided to the JDD. There will be the surviving actors with whom I have collaborated during my career, Sophie Tapie will replace her father and I have invited Jean Dujardin for the epilogue“. With Claude Lelouch, it always comes back to the family!