Pierre Niney is an actor, director, screenwriter. Jack-of-all-trades, he is the youngest resident of the Comédie-Française which he left in 2015, the youngest Caesarized, this same year, for his role of Yves Saint-Laurent in the film Yves Saint Laurent by Jalil Lespert. Wednesday, March 9, the film is released Goliath, by Frederic Tellier. He plays Matthias, a lobbyist who works for an agrochemical company that sells products such as GMOs and pesticides, which are devastating to health.
franceinfo: Goliath is a psychological thriller and is inspired by real events. Was it important for you to be part of this film?
Pierre Niney: Yes, very important, especially since it’s a subject that touches me a lot and I think citizens need to take it on even more. So, it’s inevitably a bit depressing because every time there are votes or we try to consult the population, we don’t really take them into account. I really wanted to tell the story of this film which is indeed very well documented, to work again with Frédéric Tellier and to do a role that I’m not necessarily used to doing.
More and more, you embody strong roles, is that part of your desire to evolve?
I’m getting older and roles are offered to me, but there’s no strategy, it’s a bit by force of circumstance. There, typically, I influenced the role of the lobbyist.
“It was super interesting to work on this lobbyist character and at the same time, it was very scary.”
Pierre Nineyat franceinfo
At first, Frédéric Tellier imagined me in the role of the activist played by Emmanuelle Bercot, who becomes an activist by force of circumstance. But me, right away, I really wanted this role of lobbyist. I find moral and human questioning fascinating. The goal was not to demonize him, not to do something Manichean, but to try to do something nuanced, to show his humanity, to understand why a human being can find himself in there, a little trapped or not , victim or culprit. That’s what interested us with the director.
Do you like to vary the pleasures?
I love. I started in the theatre, so I don’t visualize this job other than doing different things. As soon as I finish a serious film, I want to do comedy and vice versa. I start producing. It’s always been quite natural for me, I haven’t really tried to do it at all costs to confuse the issue or for whatever. I want to do all of this.
Dad a film teacher, mum who works on creative leisure manuals… Can we say that you are a bit of a child of the ball?
Yes a little bit. Both my parents were teachers so I am a child of teachers. I am very proud because there is a remarkable teaching in France and that the teachers are people who are really able to inspire strongly and whose job is very difficult, so I am sensitive to education and public school . So I would say: son of teachers and in a creative universe, I had this chance. They passed on fairly simple values to me: just the idea of being happy doing what you do, choosing what you want to do.
You were very quickly admitted to the free class auditions of the Cours Florent and became the youngest resident of the Comédie-Française. How did you experience that passage? Have you had time to grow, to enjoy?
I had time to enjoy. It did me a favor because suddenly, maybe at a time when young people are still asking themselves questions, are still looking for themselves, I was really determined to play and to be an actor.
“I’m enjoying things more now, maybe better than before when I was a busy young man.”
Pierre Nineyat franceinfo
Now I am entering a new phase of my life, perhaps more pleasant in some way, where I take a little more time to enjoy everything, to taste everything well, to feel good in the present, which is a daily job.
The Comédie-Française was a huge thing for me. When I learned that I was going back there, it couldn’t have been more unexpected. You can’t apply for the Comédie-Française, you have to be offered to go to the French. So, it was a huge surprise and it felt very, very unreal anyway.
When you received this César for best actor and the Patrick Dewaere Prize for Yves Saint Laurent. How did you experience it?
It was a huge surprise. It was a wonderful evening and I was honored to be recognized by my peers, so young. Looking back on it, I felt like I was on drugs, completely high for the two hours. A silly detail, but when I think back to that evening, I always remember that I had my cell phone in my jacket pocket and while I was talking on the microphone, I felt the heat very strong against me. And it was that when I left the stage, that I took out my cell phone and it was hot because I had like 175 texts which had arrived in the space of a minute and a half and the cell phone had overheated.
You have always been very committed to the roles that have been entrusted to you. Is it important for you to be fair?
It’s a bit like the second lesson I received from my parents, it’s to do something that makes you happy: “If you do it, you gotta do it right“. I think that the least politeness for the spectators and for the profession that we represent is to try to really understand what this job is, to document yourself well, to do almost journalistic research to arrive on the day J on the movie set and being the person who knows the subject best on the whole set is important to me.