Claire Nadeau flourishes in the cinema with “Juste Ciel!” and at the theater in “Happy Easter”

Claire Nadeau is an actress. Appeared for the first time in cinema alongside and under the direction of director Yves Robert in Hi artist in 1973, the seventh art always succeeded for him with in particular remarkable roles in Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud (1995) by Claude Sautet or in the film series The Tuches by Olivier Baroux: Grandma Suze, that’s her. In this course, there is also TV with two programs that have become cult Co-Co Boy And The Cocoricocoboy with Philippe Bruneau and Stéphane Collaro. Her characters have become mythical like that of Madame Nutty, the pastiche of Sue-Ellen of Dallas. The theater also offered him a Molière in a supporting role for Serva amorosa in 2010.

This Wednesday, February 15, 2023, she is starring in the film Good heaven ! by Laurent Tirard and Claire Nadeau is also playing at the Marigny theater until April 30 in the play Happy Easter.

franceinfo: In parallel with the release of the film Good heaven !you return to your first love at the Marigny theater with the play Happy Easter. It is a legendary piece from the popular repertoire, created exactly 40 years ago by Jean Poiret with Maria Pacôme. Is it the theater that you like? Is this the cinema you like, the one you offer today?

Claire Nadeau: Inevitably, I like them, otherwise I will not do it! I am open to all other styles and these suit me too.

You are always posed and at the same time, there is this little grain of madness in your eyes.

Yes. A little discrepancy perhaps.

How were you as a child?

I was horribly and sickly shy and introverted. I am always introverted, of course, the radio, you can’t hear it!

“I don’t know why very shy people show themselves in front of others, on a stage.”

Claire Nadeau

at franceinfo

Your beginnings in the theater were a little complicated because of this shyness and yet you persevered. Does that mean that you also understood that this job was going to help you, precisely, to flourish?

Yes, it’s the only place where we are not judged for what we are. We judge a character or we receive someone other than you. Me, it’s me that I can’t show, but all the others, yes, everything is fine.

The cinema came very quickly into your life. It was an extension of what you had learned before with the café-théâtre and the meetings you had been able to have with Coluche or the Splendid team…

Yes, of course, it was a very important meeting, but it has nothing to do with cinema. Above all, it allowed me to tell myself that yes, we had the right to do things like that. It really opened my horizons.

Is the theater a playground for you?

More than that, it’s a place where I feel very good. You will tell me that we feel good in recess, but there are lessons on the side. Yes, life is a bit like acting classes, recreation.

It’s a nice revenge on shyness because in the theater, you’re eye to eye with the audience, you can’t hide.

If precisely, we are completely hidden, we are completely seen and completely hidden in a character who is not yourself, therefore quiet.

What does this piece represent for you, which is still an essential piece?

It’s the modern Feydeau and moreover with a big thought for Jean Poiret with whom I have already played with a little vicious pleasure. It was a room called Rumors, an American play that he had adapted and it was both absolutely delicious and at the same time torturous because he was always in improvisations. It was funny.

You are built with films, roles. I also think of Co-Co Boy or to Cocoricocoboy, very strong emissions. What did they get you?

I had fun like crazy for almost eight, nine years and I’ve never run so much in my life. But to such an extent that sometimes, people play excerpts to me and I have no memory of having done this or that sketch, or this or that role. It was intense.

You grew up, evolved with big names like Coluche. They also allowed you to find yourself, to know what you wanted to do?

Coluche yes, all of a sudden, it was an astonishing bifurcation. It was, all of a sudden, freedom. Then it was friendship, it was another life. At that time, I completely changed my outlook. I thought that theater was classical theater and I said to myself: it’s not so much fun as life actually is. And then it got very funny.

There, you are therefore both on stage and at the same time on the big screen. Good heaven ! by Laurent Tirard is coming out this Wednesday, February 15, 2023. We talk about fraternity and also about women. Do you have the feeling that women, the role of women, in any case of a certain age, is evolving in the cinema with all the stories that came out recently?

It’s not serious.

“It seems normal to me to be old on the screen.”

Claire Nadeau

at franceinfo

Did you suffer from that?

It depends on what context you made your career. Me, it was never in the seduction where there, it becomes complicated indeed. It’s unavoidable, an old woman is less attractive than a young woman, that’s how it is for love stories. But me, I’ve always been a little off that. I was never given a role of seductress, what. I wouldn’t have wanted it anyway.

Happy with this journey, with what you have already accomplished?

Happy yesterday, the day before yesterday and today. Tomorrow does not exist, I hope to be too. But OK !