“I was not happy”: Emmanuelle Béart looks back on her “Indocile” attitude with the director Claude Berri

“The relationship was hard with him”. Winner in 1987 of the César of the best actress in a supporting role for Manon Emmanuelle Béart says he had an unpleasant behavior with director Claude Berri during the shooting of the film. In an interview with the program Aside On Canal+ this Monday, February 24, the French actress declared that she had not been « docile » With the filmmaker, who died on January 12, 2009.

« He had this eye so just, he saw who I was when I did not have the look of Manon of Sources, explains Emmanuelle Béart, who recognizes that this role has given a new dimension to her career. I had not yet chosen to do this job, […] There was something that was wrong, I was not happy, […] So I bored him during the film, for nine months. »» The actress, now 61, recalls that she had already apologized to her: ” I said it during the César. I said sorry. »»

“He’s almost annoying”

If Emmanuelle Béart now has eight nominations to César, as well as several other international distinctions, it is partly thanks to her service in Manon. The actress remembers, moreover, her first meeting with Claude Berri, during the traditional César lunch. “I am hypermacked, hypercoholous, brunette, and there is, in my head at that time, this old man who does not stop looking at me. Obviously, Claude is not old at the time, but I tell myself : “Who is it ?” He is insistent, he is almost annoying. He looks at me, he fixes me, he scrutinizes me, and I see him ”says Emmanuelle Béart.

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She adds that, the next day, the director phoned him to offer him to play the role of the young Manon, the heroine created by Marcel Pagnol in 1952. Proposal that the actress could not refuse. “I replaced another actress, unfortunately for her”however, Emmanuelle Béart specifies. At that time, in the mid -1980s, Claude Berri experienced great success with Tchao Pantin In 1983, dramatic film with Coluche and awarded five César in 1984.