“The theater allowed me to convince myself that I was an actor”, confides Benoît Poelvoorde

Benoît Poelvoorde, it’s 30 years of career, 30 years to make us laugh or often cry with laughter. 30 years that he accompanies us through roles always, not played or interpreted, but often embodied and inhabited. The revelation took place with the Belgian cult film, It happened close to you in 1992 and then there was the series The Notebooks of Monsieur Manatanethe film The hikers by Philippe Harel (1997) with more than one and a half million cinema admissions. Impossible not to quote Ghislain Lambert’s bike (2001), The ball by Alain Berberian and Frédéric Forestier in 2002, Podium by Yann Moix in 2004, or even Farewell Paris by Edouard Baer (2021).

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This Wednesday, April 5, 2023, he is showing the film Normal by Olivier Babinet. This film recounts adolescence with all its strength and fragility, through Lucie, 15, who has an overflowing, necessary, almost vital imagination, because she has to take care of her father, whom he embodies. A widowed father with multiple sclerosis. Interview.

franceinfo: Normal is a film that ultimately forces us to take us back to being teenagers. Did it have that effect on you or not?

Benoit Poelvoorde: It’s a film in which I’m not the hero because it’s a little girl whose childhood is almost going to be taken away since she has to take care of a father who is no longer in a condition to do so. -even and who is sick. So I reassure our listeners, it’s not too sad, on the contrary. It is precisely a family that manages to hold on, despite the blows of fate and illness. And Olivier Babinet, the director of this film, has a kind of rather generous, and even sometimes naive vision of a world, but coherent. He assumes his choices and it’s always fun for an actor to shoot with someone who assumes what he chooses to do.

When we watch this film, we realize your fragility. The director rightly said that he had a hard time getting it because you were resisting!

Ah good ?

Do you have that feeling or not? How difficult it is to show your fragility, to assume it.

You don’t realize it. That’s why I’m never going to see myself at the combo, the combo is the screen that allows the director to review his take or even watch the take while you’re shooting. And I hate to see myself again. And even more at the cinema! For what ? Because when you’re told something’s good, but you let something go, if you’re going to retake it, well you’re going to try to do it again and it’ll never be so good. So it’s better not to know how you did it. And I have to tell you that when I saw it, I cried. I cried with the little one and I cried with me watching me talk with my child.

Why did that put you in that condition?

I was proud of myself. Afterwards, I said to myself that it was a bit like the beginning of senility when you start crying for yourself for all these stories. But no, after, I positive my tears and I said to myself: well no, it’s that I detached myself from myself.

You play the role of a father on screen. You are not dad, on the other hand, you were the “son of”. This father died when you were 12, so obviously, behind it, it was quite complicated because life changes. How did you, as a teenager, manage to push back your demons?

It’s quite complicated to imagine the idea of ​​dying. We stay in denial for a long time. And then after we look for reasons not to be so sad.

I have a sentence when I think of my father and when he left, it was my mother who said: ‘I will love you for two’. Then she did.

Benoit Poelvoorde

at franceinfo

What do you keep from your father?

He had the art of throwing lots of parties, when the day was not suitable. I think my father taught me to say: I don’t see why we should drink more on a Friday than on a Monday.

The theater is also what allowed you to be well, to build yourself as a man, to rebuild another family…

No, the theater allowed me to convince myself that I was an actor. It was quickly explained to me that I was a brilliant actor. I was told a mix between De Niro and Raymond Goethals who was a Belgian football coach. And so I said: okay! I’ve been around the world with It happened close to you, we were bought in 27 countries, I even discovered the plane for the first time, well when the promotion was over, something had to be done. I didn’t really know what to do so I did theatre. I did it to convince myself that I was capable of acting in front of people, I really wanted to be an actor and what is most difficult is the theatre. And so, from there, my career took off.

At what age did you trust yourself?

Before being an actor, I was already a person, not to say double, but who shared an exuberant facet and a depressive facet. And to the question when I found the balance, then I would say around 50, I am 58.

“Do you know what my totem was when I was a scout? Marmoset toboggan because you always do the monkey and toboggan because I had ups and downs. Everything was said in my totem.”

Benoit Poelvoorde

at franceinfo

I was also wondering about the title Normalwhat you thought of the word ‘normal’.

In general, these are words that scare. It’s a bit like doctors who hate being called ‘crazy’. But afterwards, the problem with our society is that it is becoming more and more radical and that the norm ends up becoming very established, very short, very small. For me, normal means nothing.

Finally, are you a happy man?

I am very happy. Knock on wood today and more after doing this interview.