Actor, director, director, nominated 13 times for the César, Daniel Auteuil is also an author, composer and performer. He just released an album If you had known me, or 11 titles with texts by great poets on arrangements by Gaëtan Roussel and is on tour with his unprecedented musical show Lunch in the air.
franceinfo: Did you have to wait 50 years of career to make a childhood dream come true?
Daniel Auteuil : I have the impression that it is. In fact, it didn’t happen by will at all. It was while reading these poems by Paul-Jean Toulet that I wanted, and I don’t know why, to put guitar chords on these emotions. And it wasn’t for you, it was only for me, in my room. But the ego being too strong, I had to go from the secrecy of my room to the stage.
What does music get you?
In fact, I was born into music. My parents were opera singers, so I think that’s second nature. And at the same time, it was very complicated because our home port was Avignon, the city of the Avignon Festival, and I was attracted to both drama and music. But since it was opera music that didn’t match the music I heard on the street, I headed for the theater and the cinema. But it’s the same: the cinema, I didn’t necessarily want. Theater actor, there is a door, we know where to knock, there is a stage, it’s concrete. Cinema was more abstract, it took place in offices, I didn’t know what it was like. Music, in recent years, has been easy because we need nobody, anyway, at first.
Is it a form of independence too?
Yes. Don’t get stuck to a label.
“It’s in my temper to want to change. Not to be bored because I’m not bored, but for fear of missing things in life.”
Daniel Auteuilto franceinfo
Does death scare you?
Death terrifies me and at the same time, there are days when I have ten seconds where I say to myself: Stop your bullshit! It’s nothing, you go from that to that. But I’m not ready at all.
In this album, we discover you like never before. This is the strength of this album. Indeed, there are these texts by Paul-Jean Toulet, a poet from the South-West, inventor of the Contrerime, but there is above all this word signed by your mother which is addressed to you.
I was looking for a photo, a book fell and opened on the cover page. My mother’s handwriting read: “For Dany, my darling son, these wonderful poems by Paul-Jean Toulet to read when you grow up“. The sign was obvious. It was my mother telling me:”Read it !“I read that. On the other hand, what questions me is having spent so much time with this woman and not realizing that she had this love of poetry. t is beyond the texts that one can read, it is not the meaning of the words told in the texts, it is the emotions that one emerges from them and that one makes of them.
You have four years for your first role. You were really made for this, but in the end, didn’t you suffer from not being able to do what you wanted?
Yes, I suffered a lot from not being on a stage. This is something I was missing. I remember, naively, singing loudly in the street for someone to stop and say: ” What do you sing well! Do you want to make a record?“
Does it feel good to make music?
I don’t see it as therapy. I didn’t have to say that to be good.
“I needed to say my words, tell my stories and my music after spending my life telling other people’s stories.”
Daniel Auteuilto franceinfo
We are discovering your singing voice. What place does your voice occupy in your life?
For twenty years or so, I have spoken a lot. That is to say that I discovered the word and it makes me good. I don’t know if it feels good to others, but I feel good to talk, to say what I think and to do what I want to do.
What does it represent to go on stage?
I started this show with a guitarist and I also on the guitar. We were both. I was behind a music stand and thought I could never sing into a mic without anything else because I was hiding behind this guitar. It was a role. Today, I am delivered from that. There are the musicians playing an introduction, I come on stage and there is a microphone waiting for me.
If you want me to love again is really the mixture of poetry and music!
Why did I start to put music on these poems? I realized that I was not saying them well. It was through music that I discovered poetry.
You have always had a musicality in your way of speaking, in your phrasing, but we did not hear your voice as well as today …
It may mean that it takes time to be yourself.
Daniel Auteuil is on tour. It will be, among other dates, December 7 in Soissons. January 16, 2022 in Courbevoie. February 11 and 12, 2022 at the Trianon in Paris then February 25 in Chartres.