The face of Benoît Magimel, but above all his talent, flooded the dark rooms in this year 2022. Facing Virginie Efira in See Paris againimmersed in the crazy universe of Quentin Dupieux in Incredible but true and adventurer in Jack Mimounhere it is at the other end of the world in Pacifiction – Torments on the Islands by Albert Serra. In this feature film, he plays a high-ranking official in French Polynesia, representative of the French State and man of calculation with perfect manners. Fascinating and powerful, he is also so in his interview for Release. He goes straight back to his career, during which he learned so much, in particular to last in the industry, but also to his beginnings. The husband of Margot Pelletier, father of two children, thus evokes a particular role which he did not obtain, but which left traces…
Exploding at the cinema in Life is a long calm river when he was only 13 years old, Benoît Magimel quickly decided to devote himself entirely to acting, despite his young age which could have played tricks on him. He then tries different castings and is approached for a film by filmmaker Jacques Doillon: “When he was preparing The Little Criminal, Jacques Doillon invited me to the restaurant several times. He made me talk, talk. In the end, he took someone else for his film, but he was fed by what I told him. I didn’t realize it at the time but today I realize that I was used. We have a huge responsibility when we embark children in a film.”
The role went to another, Gérald Thomassin: “The boy Doillon chose came from a housing estate, he was charged with murder, had a César… Can you imagine the violence of the sequence, the shock it must have represented for him? It was Gérard Depardieu who told me that there was always a form of abuse in making children work in the cinema. From that point of view, I was lucky.“Although he felt used by the director and if he didn’t get this first role, Benoît Magimel managed to carve out a place for himself, winning numerous prizes: for The Pianist by Michael Haneke at Cannes, and two Césars, first for his supporting role in Heads up in 2016 then as best actor in In his lifetime.
The Gerald Thomassin affair
The fate of Gérald Thomassin is, for its part, as mysterious as it is tragic. From the homes of the DDASS, he won the César for best male hope for this famous role in The Little Criminal. But the rest of his life was complicated, plagued by his addictions to alcohol and drugs. He continues to shoot for the cinema but his attitude is problematic.
Unstable, become a drug addict and homeless, Gérald Thomassin was arrested in June 2013 and indicted for “armed robbery and murder of a person in charge of a public service mission“. He is accused of the murder, committed five years earlier, of a communal employee of Montreal-la-Cluse, Catherine Burgod, five months pregnant. He has always denied his involvement and the DNA of another has been But while the ex-comedian was preparing to receive a dismissal in 2019, he mysteriously disappeared and remains untraceable today. For his brother, he is certainly dead.