Clémentine Célarié is an actress, director, director, radio host and singer. Revealed in the film 37 ° 2 in the morning directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, she has since toured with the greatest directors such as Claude Sautet, Gérard Oury, Pierre Jolivet, Claude Lelouch. The theater is also an integral part of his life.
She publishes Forbidden words published by Albin Michel and is currently on stage at the Théâtre des Mathurins for the play A life, adapted from Guy de Maupassant’s novel.
franceinfo: You just signed Forbidden words either the gaze of a survivor and an outstretched hand for all those who are directly or indirectly affected by a disease such as cancer. That was the case with you. Is this book a need to tell, to help, to share?
Clementine Célarié: If you are at a meal with friends or anywhere and you are asked: “So how are you ?“, we are not going to say:”Bah, I had cancer. I did six months of chemo, but now it’s going great!“There are things you cannot say. That is not fair. Before I came to see you, I told myself that my worst fear is that people, when they find out that, look a little in pity. People should know that I am very lucky. They did not have the chance to have this adventure. It is an adventure, an illness. is not ‘oh my god she is going to die!’ You see, I am not dead and I do not intend to die right away.
“It is not a condemnation to be sick, it is a test given to you and a test increases you, it does not lessen you.”
Clementine Celariéto franceinfo
In this book, you tell your experience of colon cancer, diagnosed in November 2019. You say that you have won the tassel. You were afraid ?
It made me laugh. I said to myself, okay … But I never felt condemned. I was not afraid. Sometimes I am very sad. And what I’m talking about in my book is rather the light that it brought to me. And liberation. I needed to speak to the public because there are times of loneliness, maybe it was the loneliness that attacked me sometimes, not the fear.
The loneliness made me want during those months, when you’re like some kind of stranded sperm whale, to talk to someone and the first person I wanted to talk to was the audience, the person I wanted to talk to. I meet, who has been with me for years …
You say this book is “a coffee you’ll never drink with this audience.”
Yes, when you live this loneliness, a loneliness that is also chosen, it is not a loneliness that I suffer, but there is a loneliness that I live by this profession, which eats me and that I eat. We feed each other and it’s an absolute passion, I don’t have much room for anything else. So, we’re doing “stage edges” right now with the audience, after the show. Because I think it’s great to be happy about our reunion at the theater and it’s true that I’m apprehensive, but I want us to talk about it so that it becomes commonplace. I know there are people who don’t want to talk about their cancer, but I want to talk about what it brings.
“It’s like an earthquake, this kind of disease. When you come out of it, you have to be able to tell what you have lived because it is a life experience.”
Clementine Celariéto franceinfo
You also talk a lot about the theater in this book, you say that it makes you live. It keeps you going. Is the theater your life?
My life is working to build another universe, another world, another moment. And the theater, for me, is a moment when, in fact, we are outside of reality. I have a hard time living in reality. And besides, if we don’t have our own little world, for me, it’s terrible. We are hollow, we are empty and we are not strong.
I just wanted you to tell me how you were a little girl. Do you keep your child’s soul?
This is the basis. I am 64 years old and have a granddaughter. I am happy because I rediscover my childhood through her. It is not because you become an adult that you have to leave your child, especially not! It is perhaps the childhood that I have, that I will have all my life, which made that I was able to fight well against this cancer.
“Me, I never wanted to leave my childhood.”
Clementine Celariéto franceinfo
We build ourselves with our trials and we are richer, stronger and we build ourselves with all our little worlds, all our little cowboys, all our little Indians, all our games, all our beliefs.
You say: “I sheared off the chain that held me to an invisible anchor. This weight riveted to the guts that constantly reminds me that danger can return. It’s over. Today, I want to welcome happiness, me fuck naked, offer me to him “. What is happiness ?
It is to do something out of nothing. For me, it’s a joy to be able to talk about that, but accepting happiness after that, that’s also complicated.
Are they tears of fear and joy, in a way?
Yes. We defend ourselves, we defend ourselves, we arm ourselves alone and then afterwards, we say to ourselves that “Damn, if we have great happiness, what’s behind it?“You have to relax too. But I have hay fever, I didn’t cry at all!