On this day of the year 1993, Bruno Lévy, the casting director of a film in the works called The Young Peril, is intimately convinced of having found the rare pearl. It is in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris in front of the Lycée Turgot. He spotted this charismatic young man who sports huge dreadlocks and rings and seems to be waiting for his girlfriend. Bruno Lévy approaches him and offers him an appointment with a director, a certain Cédric Klapisch. The young man refuses and swings at him: “No, I want to read the script first.” Taken aback, the casting director ends up laughing and explains to him that in the street they sometimes distribute leaflets, but never scripts.
Almost thirty years later, Romain Duris, 47, is much less surly when he is offered to shoot in a film. Between auteur cinema, period film or romantic comedy, the actor has become a staple of French cinema. It will also appear on the poster of E i ff el – whose release has been postponed to October 13, 2021 – a biopic on the visionary builder who transformed Paris. Paris, the city where Romain Duris was born like his father and grandparents. Dad is an architect, mum is a colorist, he has an older brother, François, who will become a designer at Peugeot, and a younger sister, Caroline who is now a professional pianist. At home there is no television, only a radio playing classical music. As for the family library, it is very well stocked! A bobo environment before the hour which pushes him to draw all the time, a gift acquired from childhood. The young artist also intends to make it his job as a mother and he studies applied arts at the Duperré school in 1993. But overnight, he stops drawing to devote himself to music: “ I had a short keupon/psycho-billy period at 14, where I listened to Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cramps, Bérurier noir… But it’s true that it was very brief. Very quickly, I got into regae, hip-hop, funk, electro…”, confided the actor at the premiere in April 2019. To make ends meet, “student Duris applies as a pizza delivery boy, but his meeting with Bruno Lévy will put an end to this life project. The success of Young Peril, released in the midst of the revival of the 70s associated with the natural pest of Romain, will hit the mark. With his French Johnny Depp look, the man becomes a generational actor who perfectly captures the spirit of the times. Duris is the young man in tune with the times, grunge and reggae at the same time, he appeals to the female audience but less to the men who envy his handsome dark brown style, limit head to slaps. “Guys don’t want to say they like me,” he remarked in GQ magazine in December 2012.
Filmography
1994: THE YOUNG PERIL As a rebellious high school student in front of Cédric Klapisch’s camera, he bursts onto the screen. It is also the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between the actor and the filmmaker.
1997: GADJO DILO The director Tony Gatlif makes him turn in Gadjo dilo, film which explores the daily life of Roma in Bucharest. A decisive role that definitely launches Romain Duris.
2002: L’AUBERGE SPANOLE He reunites with Klapisch and breaks his rebellious image by playing an Erasmus student. A popular success that will give two sequels.
2005: MY HEART HAS STOPPED Short hair and a leather jacket… Romain Duris plays a ruthless real estate agent in this remake of Mélodie pour un tueur by Jacques Audiard.
2007: MOLIÈRE Laurent Tirard offers a lively and intelligent vision of the playwright. In the title role, Duris steals the show from everyone.
2010: L’ARNACŒUR Brilliantly, the actor tries his hand at romantic comedy in which he charms Vanessa Paradis. Another box office hit.
2012: POPULAIRE A punchy and vintage film by Régis Roinsard, in which Duris plays the boss of an insurance firm in France at the end of the 1950s. The osmosis with Déborah François is total.
2018: OUR BATTLES An Amazon employee finds himself a solo dad overnight. A film that constantly swings between social drama and family chronicle. Duris makes everyone agree.
2021: EIFFEL Return to period films in this prestigious biopic by Martin Bourboulon. An event film that should definitively devote Duris?
However, in his private life, the man is far from being a rider. “I don’t feel ‘seducer’, I don’t want to go from one woman to another. In love, I like relationships that last …. It has never been a goal in itself that it works with the girls”, he admitted to the Gala in March 2005 when he has been in a relationship since 2002 with the actress Olivia Bonamy. On the cinema side, Romain goes on to films with Cédric Klapisch, Tony Gatlif, Jacques Audiard, Patrice Chéreau, Christophe Honoré who exfiltrate him from his comfort zone. He did not learn comedy, became an actor thanks to a wild casting, but his radiant charisma is more than patent on the screen. Attracting all eyes, it is more and more present, more and more mature. With age, he abandoned his rebel look to approach the 2000s in a much more stylish fashion. He cut his hair, worked his roles more while retaining his very Parisian “coolness”. We know that the actor likes to party with his friends (Raphaël Fejtö, Benoît Magimel, Clément Sibony…) in bars in Bastille or Oberkampf, dancing at the Favela Chic in République while refusing to participate in show biz evenings and other charity galas. “We felt that he liked being in a band, blending into his group of friends, but above all not being the star, the actor who makes his show”, remembers the writer Basile Parnurgias in GQ in 2012. he actor appreciates champagne (at the start of the evening) and vodka (at the end) and does not balk at a firecracker. Like a lambda thirty-something from the 2000s who will take care not to sink into addictions while avoiding too much exposure. “I systematically refuse photos and selfies. I don’t want my life, when I’m not working, to be made available to anyone”, he explained in the columns of Marie Claire in April 2017. Funny star, elusive who is never located where we awaits him. When Romain Duris chooses a cause to defend, for example, he is also surprised. With him, we are not in global warming or hunger in the world since he has been sponsoring for four years an association, CerHom, which helps men who are victims of male cancers, such as that of the prostate or testicles. In discretion, always…
“In love, I like relationships that last.”
Twenty years of love with Olivia Bonamy
With his air of a dark handsome in rebel mode, Duris did very well in 1994 on the set of Young Peril. He successively seduced the beautiful English film Lisa Faulkner then Élodie Bouchez who plays his fiancée. Subsequently, the man will turn out to be ultra-discreet about his love life… In 2002, on the set of Lost Girls, Oily Hair, he meets Olivia Bonamy with whom he will have two little boys: Luigi, born in 2009 and another with a first name that has remained secret, born in 2013. Almost twenty years together… A sort of feat for a couple of actors.
His looks From dandy trash to dandy cool
After the disheveled hair, little goatee and unlaced Dr. Martens look typical of the 90s, Duris made a more stylish turn at the start of the 2000s. He was often seen in a very fitted dark suit. with this particular sign: his multiple rings, memories of trips to Algeria or Palestine. Over time, they have gradually disappeared to give way to a more sober look which results in the use of dark colors and few accessories… And an important detail: the actor has always assumed his hairiness, fashion metrosexual born in the 2000s who had not worked with him: “Ah no, cosmetics for men! Pity. I don’t wear perfume. I am in the old patterns”, he confessed to Madame Figaro in October 2008.
Panic in Uzbekistan
In April 2017, on the antenna of France Info, the actor tells an astonishing and chilling anecdote at the same time: on the set of Shimkent Hotel (released in 2003), in Uzbekistan, the film crew is arrested by a policeman drunk who declares to the director of the film, pointing to Romain Duris: “He has no right to drive a car, we are going to shoot him.” Something to put a chill on… The case will quickly be settled through the payment of a bribe of 100 dollars which will save his life. We are so little…
Recognized draftsman
Since childhood, Romain Duris draws all the time. “I like to let the pencil guide my hand. It is sometimes by blackening the page that we hang new, unexpected forms”, declared the actor in December 2019 in the columns of the Parisian Week-end on the occasion of his exhibition called Féroce in a gallery in the Parisian district. of the Marais. The man admitted at that time that drawing after a shoot allowed him to reconnect with everyday life. Like a liberated line…
Renaud Leclercq