Daniel Auteuil is an actor, director, author, composer, performer and director. This jack of all trades, also a father as he likes to point out, has been nominated fourteen times for the Césars, and obtained a first in 1987, in the best actor category for his role in films: John of Florette and Manon des Sources by Claue Berri, then another in 2000 for The girl on the Bridge by Patrice Leconte. This Wednesday, October 19, 2022, he is starring in the film The new toy by James Huth with Jamel Debbouze. It’s a remake of the movie The toy by Francis Veber, released in 1976 with Pierre Richard and Michel Bouquet.
franceinfo: Is it difficult to say yes to such a striking film, so marked?
Daniel Auteuil : It’s more than a remake, it’s a new interpretation, meaning that the characters are there, the heart of the story is there, but everything around it has changed.
With Jamel Debbouze, we are not trying to follow in the footsteps of Pierre Richard and Michel Bouquet. This is another proposal. These are characters closer to us.
Daniel Auteuilat franceinfo
When the movie came out in 1976, you were 26. Do you remember this movie?
Yes, very well. It’s a wonderful film, of course! He was very funny, but very cruel. Ours has the particularity of being funny and we are still more in the emotion and in the time. And there is a kind of breathing all the same, that is to say that we can escape from the castle where I live to go into Sami’s world and therefore find another reality. So there are two parallel stories that work well.
The toy, he is a man who is praised by a father as a birthday present for his son’s 11th birthday. At first glance, we hate this child, he’s a rich kid, he has no value, no respect from others. And then finally, we realize how sad and lonely he is.
That’s it. And the father and the son are unable to communicate, which consolidates the humor of Jamel and his scenes. This kind of opposite stuff. He doesn’t understand, he comes from a world where love is at hand, mutual aid is at hand. And there, he does not have the keys of this world. The father is a man of power and full of responsibilities, so he can’t even show a moment of humanity. This film is very different from the first. What remains is the whole magical side of the child king, his extraordinary toys… Everything that made people dream back then, when I was 26 years old. Jamel was a child and he says that when he saw this film, it made him dream. He dreamed of having Pierre Richard as a toy and I think that today, spectators, young spectators, families will dream of seeing what state this poor Sami is in as a toy. What is also very nice in this film is that Sami is going to be a father and he is going to be confronted with a child who is more adult than him. He will have to teach him about childhood to this adult son. This film is beautiful because each character finally goes towards the other and makes a path towards the other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yabs26v4pc
What child were you? Your parents were opera and operetta singers. You were really a child of the ball, you followed them everywhere.
Yes, I was with them. I was very, very, very, very loved and I was a really dreamy child, quite rambunctious and, it seems to me, mocking.
You started early, at seven years old, you were the son of Madame Butterfly. And then there was middle school, you still did three fourths. In fact, what interested you was the school of life. You understood very quickly that you were drawn to this school.
Yes, but I didn’t know that. I couldn’t express it. It was unconscious. But you can’t analyze that when you’re young. That is to say, we are unhappy not to be like the others.
I suffered the martyrdom of never having been able to do the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, of not being in a school. It’s being alone all the time.
Daniel Auteuilat franceinfo
I’m not complaining, but I don’t belong to any gang… But afterwards, I had the chance to make friends for life.
Even the music was obvious. Has music changed your way of seeing life, of seeing this acting profession? I feel like it was an adventure that strengthened you in a lot of things that you never imagined you could do.
Yes, but that’s the story of my life, that is to say the challenges I set myself. This is the trick of autodidacts. Afterwards, you have to know your threshold of incompetence! So I like this life because it’s new and then because it gives me new energy. When I go to make a film, I go there as if it were the first or the last. I do not know.
If you had known methat’s the title of your album with Gaëtan Roussel’s touch behind it, it’s sublime and I know there’s a second one in the works.
Yes, we are writing it. We have already recorded five songs, there are still six to record, then a new tour which is being prepared, and then the Casino de Paris in March 2023.