Actress, Alexandra Lamy returned to the life and daily life of the French thanks to her role of Chouchou in the television series broadcast on France 2, A boy a girl (1999 to 2003). Since then, she has never stopped playing romantic, funny and dramatic characters whether in the theater or in the cinema. Today, she plays a very protective mother in the film The test, by Emmanuel Poulain-Arnaud, released last Wednesday.
franceinfo: It is Philippe Katerine who plays the role of the father and your husband. Your relationship is just incredible and especially your role as mom. We realize through you how it is undoubtedly the most difficult role to embody in life.
ATlexandra Lamy: It is true that we are also inspired a lot by who we are. The scenario was great, there was already everything! We feel that Emmanuel Poulain-Arnaud, the author and director, observed extremely well. What I love about this film is that it’s not just the role of a mother, it’s also that of a family. It’s a real family column and I think it works really well.
There is this very natural side that emerges from you, but it always has been. You have always embodied it and represented it on the screen.
Yes. And oddly, that’s the hardest part to do. Obviously, it takes work to try to be as natural as possible by sometimes having roles that are not necessarily who you are. The theater has been a very good school, but it is especially with A boy a girl that we learned this naturalness, the series was the best school to learn that.
“I am one of those actresses who work a lot before, upstream, precisely to be completely free, to be fully malleable for the director, so that the texts come out naturally.”
Alexandra Lamyto franceinfo
How was your family?
We are lucky with my sister, Audrey, to have parents who have loved each other for 55 years. It’s a couple who still hold hands, who still say to themselves “I love you“, which is still a couple … Frankly, this is the last specimen, there are no more. We really lived in a universe where there was a lot of love. It’s funny because I I am very close to my father, I am close to my mother too, but my sister is closer to her. For example, my first sexual relation, I told it one morning at 7 o’clock, to my father. He was making breakfast and I tell him that I had my first time and it didn’t go very well. And my father, making toast, embarrassed, said to me: “But what are you saying ? Why are you telling me this? But don’t tell me that! Stop telling me all your stuff. Go tell your mother!“
So I’m going to see my mom in the bathroom. I start talking to him and then as I go along, I see a little head that goes through the bathroom, that of my father. He takes the floor and asks me: “All right, but did you do foreplay?“So all of a sudden he gets into the conversation and it was great because I’m like: What luck! Somehow, as a father, he couldn’t, but at the same time, it’s still his daughter must be protected, he knows men and says to himself: “As long as this man respects my daughter“. I’m telling this because I find it absolutely brilliant. And it’s a chance, indeed, to also have parents with whom we can have this freedom, to be able to talk about everything.
When you take a good look at your journey, you needed all the time to be allowed to have self-confidence.
With Jean Dujardin, we started in something, at the time, when the comedy, TV, series trio, in general, meant that we were off to a bad start to have a career behind, other than that one. Everyone told us at the beginning when we started: “But never do that, you’ll never work in your life again. You will never do anything else“. We took this risk and finally, so much the better because we were undoubtedly the first to cross to the other side. Fortunately we did not listen to anyone since there was even one who did. had an Oscar!
“After ‘A guy, a girl’, I had maybe a little bit the double pain that was that I was a woman and that everything often opened up for the man and much less for the woman. was a bit of a battle too. “
Alexandra Lamyto franceinfo
It took a long time for you to get into this dramatic space. Worried about touching this register?
Not at all. It is because I was not offered to at least pass the castings! Not at all. So much so that for Ozon’s film, for example, when he did the casting for Ricky (2009), I was with my friend Mélanie Doutey. And when I had the casting, I said to him: Anyway, I’m not going to go because I’m sure he’s only going to see in me. A boy a girl and it will be super hard. She answered me : “Oh no, for once you can pass a casting, you’re gonna go“. Indeed, she did well because I think that François Ozon also helped me to make this opening.
If I understood correctly, the next step is the realization?
Exactly ! I just finished a TV movie and loved doing it. It’s taken from an adaptation of a comic book by Quentin Zuitton called Affected. It is the story of a group of women who are rebuilding themselves thanks to fencing. It becomes therapeutic fencing because they have all suffered domestic violence, incest, etc. I especially wanted to be on the reconstruction because we hear a lot about it and we say to ourselves now: “What can we do with it? How do we get out of it?“So I made this TV movie and I loved doing it with my friend, Mélanie Doutey. You will also find Claudia Tagbo, who is extraordinary, and my daughter Chloé Jouannet. Yes, I took my daughter!