The actor has fun playing mysterious writers against Niels Arestrup in the Arte series “Les Papillons Noirs”. He evokes the complicity which links him to Catherine, his elder, since childhood.
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“I have a lot of tenderness for this childhood photo of me and my older sister, Catherine, with our not possible cuts and our good cheeks. I could not say where she was taken exactly, perhaps Being in Amiens, where we spent a few years before growing in the 11 e arrondissement of Paris. We spent a lot of time together, playing without needing much, a stick, the Earth, like here, toys, a few barbies … These are precious moments, a mixture of joy and boredom almost soft – quite different from our time, where I spend my time fighting against the omnipresence of screens so that My children remain healthy.
My sister remains one of the central persons in my life. Young people, we went together in the PTT holiday colony, because my parents both worked there, in Brittany or skiing. Her friends called me Nico trying to sympathize: they all wanted to have me in his pocket to go out with her … Both impulsive, we bound to be, but without really getting angry. Today, it is she that I call when it’s not going; This is my accomplice, with which I have so many good memories, even recent. No later than last Saturday, we had to see ourselves in speed, unexpectedly, and it ended with our children and our friends at time, to drink and to laugh.
I grew up with moviegoers: my father had a pronounced taste for American cinema, my mother for French cinema. But, to be an actor, I did not premeditize him. I even tried a few weeks to become a pharmacy preparer, that is to say! At 16, I was struggling to hold in place and I left the school system. I spent time hanging out in my neighborhood, fighting, looking for problems – it was not my best period. The day I entered the Daumesnil club to take Thai boxing lessons, with coach André Zeitoun, everything changed. I finally had a place where to let off steam my rage. I learned to be precise, lively. I came out was wrugled, but the head rested, with a feeling of fullness.
It is in this club that one day has emerged Antoine Carrard, the casting director of the Petit Vusur, by Erick Zonca. He introduced himself and said he was looking for someone for a small boxer role. The guys volunteered with enthusiasm. Me, I was there, head down, thinking to make me forget. This is what attracted Antoine Carrard, he called me: “And you, there, basically, don’t want to pass the casting?” I learned the text, and I did not have any more Only one desire in mind: to convince. I gave a lot, to the point that Erick ended up entrusting me with the main role of the film.
My parents and my sister were happy for me but was afraid that I will get carried away. They saw my first films and did not try to spare me: the evening of the preview of Snowboarder, from Olias Barco, in 2003 to the Grand Rex, I remember crossing the street to go and kiss my father . He gathered, made fun of me gently. Well, at the same time, I knew that I had not participated in a masterpiece …
This proximity that we share, my sister and I, was able to help me on certain shoots, as if to play Sophie Quinton’s brother in Léger, Jean-Pierre Améris’s film where I interpreted again a boxer. It was necessary an easy, immediate fraternal agreement, and I did not have to think a lot to be able to embody it: this pure complicity, I already knew it immediately. “