It was on February 25 at the Cesar Ceremony. Gilles Lellouche was that evening at the Olympia, seated among the gratin of French cinema and nominated opposite Adam Driver or even Pierre Niney to receive the precious statuette awarded to the best actor.
Behind his black mask, it’s hard to say if he was hiding a smile or repressing a pout of disappointment… But, as soon as the name of Benoît Magimel was announced, rewarded with the prestigious trophy, he was in any case the first to lift his hands up to applaud. Not jealous or resentful for a single second… It must be said that the 49-year-old actor is a regular at the ceremony nominations. He had seven in all and each time, like this year for his role in BAC Northhe left empty-handed. “I’ve never been addicted to awards, I’ve never been top of the class, I’m not going to be today”he confided, a philosopher, to the Sunday newspaper last August, admitting all the same that he had “felt in the nape of the neck a little current of cold air not very pleasant…”
It must be said that in 2019, his film The Big Bath had been nominated ten times but had only won one prize, that of best actor in a supporting role for Philippe Katerine. Whatever, at the box office, his bittersweet comedy was a hit, bringing together more than 4.2 million spectators in dark rooms. For a few years now, the soon-to-be fifty-something brown has become one of the safe bets of French cinema, loved by both the public and directors, both popular and cutting-edge. Gilles Lellouche took a long time to get there.
Born in Savigny-sur-Orge on July 5, 1972, he grew up with his older brother Philippe in Fontainebleau. Their mother Sylviane, Catholic and Breton, sang at galas and then managed a perfumery, and their father Claude, a Jew from Algeria, was in turn a builder, jeweler and chief accountant. Gilles is a complexed and introverted child. So he took refuge in drawing, graffiti and painting. His dream is to enter the Beaux-Arts. Everything changes at college, thanks to a French teacher who introduces him to the theater. “I was really born, long after my birth, in the eyes of girls in French class when I played, at 12, Les Fourberies de Scapin in front of the whole class”he confided to Paris Match, in 2018. The shy boy is no more, at least in appearance. He becomes rebellious, gets kicked out of high school and doesn’t hate fighting. It is also during one of them that he wins his hooked nose. But the brunette has also found his calling. He passes his baccalaureate and, just after, he enrolls in the Florent course.
Paris is his, or almost
He’s a romantic!
Far, far from the image of the unfaithful and cunning flirt that sticks to his skin, especially since the film The unfaithful, Gilles is more of a serious type with women. The proof, he spent eleven years with Mélanie Doutey, from 2002 to 2013. Together, they had a daughter, Ava, now 12 years old. “The day when one becomes fickle, it is because one has stopped believing in love and in the other”he confided in TV 7 days, in 2012. The two ex get along well and share custody of their daughter. The great romantic confided that he fell in love again at the age of 40. Since 2015, he has been in a relationship with Alizée Guinochet, a former model thirteen years his junior, who became a jewelry designer, and mother of a little Dessa born in 2011.
He started by making music videos
Before passing in front of the cameras, Gilles Lellouche began his career by making clips with his sidekick Tristan Aurouet, about thirty in all. We owe them in particular those of the titles Heavenlyby MC Solaar, in 1997 and That’s My Peoplefrom NTM, in 1999. In a completely different genre, they have also worked for Isabelle Boulay, Dany Brillant and Pascal Obispo. “We made a clip in Canada for Isabelle Boulay, it was an interstellar crap!”he admitted in the podcast Pocket moneylast January. “In another clip, I found myself in Scotland with bikers and people in kilts.”
“At the time, to be honest with you, me, the small provincial coming from a family certainly intelligent but not intellectual, I hardly knew what homosexuality washe says in Madame Figaroin 2017, referring to one of his teachers. I thought cinema stopped at Bruce Willis.” Gilles became a real cinephile and, at the exit, the role proposals not jostling, he wrote a first short film with his friend – who is still today –, Tristan Aurouet. They make a few clips and Gilles shoots in a few pubs, for McDonald’s or Cegetel. In the cinema, it is not yet that. Yvan Attal still offers him a small role in My wife is an actressthen he will make two decisive encounters at the same time: that of love with Mélanie Doutey,
Her 2008 looks
Increasingly stylish in his early days, and in large part because of his roles, the actor had the image of the handsome, burly hunk, who prefers Marcel and Ray-Ban to the three-piece suit. Now, with his three-day beard, he is as stylish in a chic tuxedo as in a casual outfit. The almost fifty has the class! who will be his companion for eleven years, and that of a certain Guillaume Canet. They will never leave each other. Guillaume directs it first in My idol then in Do not tell anyone and of course, The Little Handkerchiefs which, upon their release in 2010, will prevail in the whirlwind of fame. He, for his part, directs his friend in his first feature film Narco, co-written with his accomplice Tristan Aurouet. He will also be in The unfaithfulhis project with Jean Dujardin, another friend, and The Big Bath, released in 2018. Gilles is faithful, in love as in friendship. He lives in the chic and intellectual 5th arrondissement of Paris but does not talk about it. His thing is more big tables with friends, good food and travel, than big cars and other bling-bling attributes. Besides, it’s very simple, he hates social networks and those who open their mouths about anything and everything. This does not prevent him from being a committed man. He does not wait for the #MeToo movement to denounce, in the winter of 2016 in Telerama, “the delirious sexism of French cinema”.
He denounces the sexism of French cinema
The actress is an object of desire, but the problem is that there are the elegant directors and the others. Besides, in The Big Baththe strongest characters are played by women, Marina Foïs, Virginie Efira and Leïla Bekhti, and the screenplay for the film was written before 2017. It takes a stand against Marine Le Pen in 2017, and denounces the extreme film right BAC North. “I don’t want to be politicized but we can be an actor and a citizen”he explains in Paris Matchin 2017. He voted socialist, would not necessarily do so today, but he still has his heart on the left and believes, in 2019 in QGthat with macronism, “we are still very far from the perfect balance”. Despite a good fifty films and his popularity, going to the United States like his friend Dujardin does not really interest him. He prefers to choose his films carefully, like the last one, Goliathin which he plays a lawyer engaged in a battle against pesticides. “Gilles is lucky to continue to look around him”entrusts his producer and friend Alain Attal to QGin 2019. “It’s rare and difficult when you become famous”. A good guy, a real one. Louise Monteil¦
Friends first
Festive and generous, Gilles is a kind of gang, the type to love weekends with friends and not to let go of those he loves, no matter what. “I tend to live in packs”he says in She in 2017. “I am even the antithesis of solitary, I am convinced that sharing, living together is better.” Since his debut, he has always been so close to Tristan Aurouet with whom he started and, of course, Guillaume Canet and Jean Dujardin, his lifelong friends. There is also Léa Drucker, Leïla Bekhti among her followers and more recently Audrey Diwan, Cédric Jimenez and Manu Payet. For ten years and until his death on September 6, 2021, Gilles also maintained a very intimate relationship with Jean-Paul Belmondo, whom he considered his cinema godfather.
See also: Big crush on Pierre Niney and Gilles Lellouche live on BFMTV…
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