Laurent Lafitte plays the late businessman in a series on Netflix. At 50, the Comédie Française actor has become a figure in French theater and cinema who, behind his appearance of an ideal son-in-law, cultivates discretion and caustic humor.
It all started with a wig. On the first day of filming 16 or so, Tristan Séguéla, the director, would have laughed when noticing the air of resemblance between Laurent Lafitte, who sports a toupee, and Bernard Tapie. The two men laugh and realize that they share the desire to adapt the 1,000 lives of the singer, businessman, club president and minister. We are in 2012 and eleven years later, less than two years after the death of “Nanard”, the project has come to an end: the series Tapie is available on Netflix Wednesday September 13.
Under the costume and a good dose of makeup, Laurent Lafitte. The 50-year-old actor, revealed to the general public in the role of the somewhat clumsy and loving friend in The Little Handkerchiefs by Guillaume Canet, is today a sure value of the French cultural landscape. A a jack-of-all-trades capable of juggling theater classics, great popular comedies and arthouse films. But also someone capable of humorous bursts of brilliance which contributed to his fame.
Uncertain beginnings
Because Laurent Lafitte is naturally funny. Muriel Mayette-Holtz, who had him as a student at the Conservatory and allowed him to later join the Comédie Française, confirms:
“He was fooling around all day, it was hard not to laugh and lecture.”
Muriel Mayette-Holtz, former theater teacher of Laurent Lafitteat franceinfo
The direction of the valve, already. “I liked to annoy my teachers by standing up to them. I was a bit of an idiot, quite insolent. But it was only because I was bored, that’s all”, he tells VSD.
It is again to kill boredom that he responds, at 15 years old, to a casting announcement published in France Soir, father’s bedside journal. Bingo! At the end of the fifteen days spent on the set of The Child and the President, by Régis Milcent, he understands that school will never be his favorite playground. “What I had experienced was so strong that I then have the impression that anything that does not lead to repeating this experience is useless. So, I reject the lessons in a visceral way”he develops in Paris Match.
For him, school ends in second grade. His parents, property dealers, did not dissuade him. “They saw that I was determined and very resourceful”he justifies in The Parisian. The former high school student from the 16th arrondissement joins Cours Florent, located near Stalingrad, in the north of the capital. “I was living under a roof, the kind of person who was stripped of my Westons when leaving Saint-Jean-de-Passy, it was a shock to me”he laughs in The world.
For those who did not go to the theater or the cinema during their young years, but who readily cites Louis de Funès, Michel Serrault in The Crazy Cagethe films of Alfred Hitchcock or Jacqueline Maillant, the discovery of a more classical repertoire is a big upheaval.
“He did not have the cultural background, like many students, but he compensated with his discretion and humility.”
Muriel Mayette-Holtz, former theater teacher of Laurent Lafitteat franceinfo
“He was not at all sure of himself. He tried his hand at classics, at tragedy, but his sense of the comic prevailed at the start. He always questioned himself to broaden his palette”traces the one who directs from the Nice theater.
A one-man show that changes everything
If today, he alternates between Don Juan on the stage and Bernard Tapie on Netflix and signs his first production, the scathing comedy The origin of the world, Laurent Lafitte was not immediately at the top of the bill. But, he always had work as an actor and never “never needed to have a job on the side”he specifies to the Belgian daily The evening. This is how we find it particularly in the sitcom Mannequin Classon M6, in the early 1990s. An experience that only lasted one season. “On paper, it seemed good to me. I was happy, I had work, I was able to get an apartment. And then I saw the result…” he laughs in Paris Match.
He aspired to something else and after his time at the Conservatory, he began writing his one-man show: Laurent Lafitte, as his name suggests. “I understood that what I gave off at first glance did not correspond at all to my inner world and that I was going to have to change that if I wanted to move forward. That’s why I wrote and performed my one-man show: to make my voice heard and to prove what I was worth as an actor.” he justifies in Psychologies Magazine.
This show takes it very far, particularly with the character of Claude the fist-fucker. But it’s a revelation. He opens the doors to the plateau of Small handkerchiefsthe choral film by Guillaume Canet, then those of the Comédie Française where Muriel Mayette-Holtz attracted him in 2012. “He’s the only one in the Conservatory troupe to have dared to confront a ‘lone on stage’. It takes courage”she admires.
“He seems like the ideal son-in-law, he’s a good friend, he has an unparalleled sense of comedy, but he’s very complex, he doesn’t reveal himself easily. He’s a sensitive, worried person, he’s not not as smooth as it looks.”
Muriel Mayette-Holtz, former theater teacher of Laurent Lafitteat franceinfo
In The worldGuillaume Canet remembers having taken “a slap” seeing his show and having “discovered a cynical, corrosive, super intelligent guy”. Today, the Cap Ferret gang meets on each other’s sets, rooms and has fun on television sets, like their appearance on the show “Burger Quiz” for promotion from the continuation of Small handkerchiefs, We will grow old together. “They were successful at the same time, it was a generation that magnified itself. They made each other laugh in class, but they were not in rivalry”agrees Muriel Mayette-Holtz.
The very secret celebrity
Liberated by this success and seen in a new light, Laurent Lafitte was able to show what he was capable of in the field of humor. In 2012, on the César stage, he dared to present the prize “best French in an American actress” in front of a hilarious Kate Winslet. In 2016, at the Cannes Film Festival, he said, all smiles, opposite Woody Allen: “I’m glad you’re here, because in recent years you’ve toured a lot in Europe even though you haven’t even been convicted of rape in the United States.” A joke, written with Vincent Dedienne, validated by Thierry Frémaux, the general delegate of the festival, ensures The worldwhich Roman Polanski, targeted by the projection, and his wife Emmanuelle Seigner, who describes Lafitte as a “big badger” on Instagram.
Even today, he regrets nothing. “The only thing I heard was, ‘It can’t be done.’ I would have liked to have an opinion on the valve, which I continue to find funny. The rest, I don’t care. I’m not a whistleblower”he justifies in The Obs.
“My father told me: ‘You would kill your mother for a good word.’ No: I would kill myself for a good word. It’s the taking of risks that interests me, not the fact of hurting people.”
Laurent Lafittein “L’Obs”
He doesn’t want to shock, he dares “just for the fun of it”he assumes in Tecknikart. Even with his close friends, he works like this. He is, with them, much more verbose than in interviews about his private life. Fortune, political choices, sexuality… We know almost everything about Laurent Lafitte’s personal life. The man knows how to kick when Release the kitchen on these subjects.
Not a fan of social networks, he cultivates discretion in interviews so as not to spoil the viewer’s imagination, as he explains in The Parisian : “I grew up with a cinema about which little was known, neither about the way it was made, nor about the people who created it, and that made me dream a lot. I want the same thing.”
“I find it more important to put my work and my choices first, rather than myself.”
Laurent Lafittein “The Parisian”
A person he is now hidingall the features of Bernard Tapie and which he will soon hide behind a nose, a cape, nay a peninsula, since he will rub shoulders with another colorful figure, on the stage this time: Cyrano de Bergerac.