Don’t talk to him about a career, cinema or even sets: when Jean-Hugues Anglade is with his sons, nothing else matters. Born from his past union with Mali Lecomte, Pierre-Louis, 20, and Emile, 19, are the greatest pride of his life, he who never ran after the star-system, never put his private life too much ahead.
As he confided to Gala, during a very intimate interview, the actor knows where his priorities are. “Being a father is the greatest happiness of my life! I raise them since they are very small, now, I manage the studies. They are formidable, have a lot of stubbornness, are constant in their choices“, he explains. It must be said that part of his pride comes from the fact that he raised them for a long time as a single dad.
A situation that has evolved somewhat as we grew up. “Since adolescence, they have become closer to their mother and vice versa. It’s really the best that could have happened, because as much as I was very good at managing the early childhood, as much as I need, now that they are older, to discuss with their mother the attitude that i must have“, he admits, sometimes a little lost.
The first left the family home a long time ago
His sons are in full higher education… and none of them wants to become an actor! Pierre-Louis, the eldest, is studying in Canada, his little brother is in Paris, in a 3D animation school. Perhaps they saw too much of the negative sides of their father’s profession. “They know that I have a somewhat deleterious, somewhat particular life, that I have a complicated job where you work at certain times and not at others, and therefore you have to fight against a certain loneliness that you feel“, according to him. Moreover, his sons give him back all the love he gives them, often surrounding him. “As I am solitary and introverted, I dare not keep up to date with what they are going through on a personal level, I do not want to interfere in their private life. That’s why they like me a lot, well I feel like they like me a lot because they are very protective of me“.
Does he fear the “empty nest syndrome, he who is so lonely? Single for some time, he has also lost many friends including Patrice Chéreau and Jean-Jacques Beineix, two disappearances that have affected him a lot. But he knows that his sons will not leave him, even if the eldest no longer lives with him.”The first left the family home a long time ago because before Canada, he did two years of study in Lyon. The second, I do everything to make his life more beautiful and when we ask him the question, he says he doesn’t want to leave his dad alone. I think he is aware of a certain vulnerability of his father“, he explains, with great honesty.
The full interview with Jean-Hugues Anglade in GalaApril 14, 2022 issue.