TOUR DE FORCE!
THE PERFORMANCE OF MARION COTILLARD AS FRENCH ICON EDITH PIAF IN LA VIE EN ROSE IS NOT JUST ONE OF THE BEST OF 2007, BUT EVER. NOW, MEET THE WOMAN BEHIND THE MAGIC...
Where were you born and raised?
I was born in Paris. And when I was about eleven I was living in the suburbs, and then we moved in the countryside. And I have two brothers—are twins. And my parents are actors on stage—both of them. So I lived in that artistic atmosphere as a child.
What sorts of things were you interested in as a child? Did you always aspire to be an actress?
Well, as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be an actress. And I loved—and I still love—artistic things. I mean, it’s how I can express myself. I love to sing, I love to dance, I love to do some painting and sculpture, even if I’m not very good at it. But I really love to do this.
You mention singing. I’ve heard that long before you lip-synced to Edith Piaf, you were lip-syncing to Madonna…
[laughs] Yes, I was lip-syncing my favorite singers when I was a child. But it was not, like, very technical lip-sync, as it was for Piaf, of course.
As far as acting, how did you learn the craft? Did you ever have formal training, or did you learn from observation?
Well, no, I started to take lessons—it’s not a good way to say this, because it’s not really lessons but, like, training—when I was fourteen. I think I started when I was fourteen, maybe earlier. And both of my parents taught me—or, I would say, helped me to reveal—what I had inside, what I have inside. So they were my first teachers, my first guides, I would say.
I’d like to mention a few of the films in which you appeared before La Vie En Rose, and I hope you can just share a thought or two about the parts you played in them and what they meant to your career. The first one is Lilly Bertineau in the Taxi movies…
Ah, yes. Well, it was the first time I was in a very successful movie, and so it was a beautiful meeting, I would say, with a big audience, because it was very successful. At that time, I was still wondering, you know—you know, you expose yourself in front of people—do you really have the right to expose yourself like this? Do you really have something to say that is strong enough to have the right to be in the light. Well, I was very young, and I had all those questions in mind. It was an interesting period—that I was searching myself in that business.
The next one is Josephine in Big Fish…
Well, that was a dream. Tim Burton is one of my favorite directors. He’s my idol. And to have the opportunity to meet him was something huge for me, as a French actress. And to work with him was something I couldn’t believe. So it was one of the first amazing experiences—an experience where you have the particles in your eyes and in your body, you know, doing what you’re passionate for, and with someone who gave me the desire to be an actress. Because Tim Burton is really part of, you know, what drove me to be an actress.
The next one is from a very good movie, Tina in A Very Long Engagement…
Yeah. That’s one of my favorite roles. It’s very funny because I was shooting Big Fish at the time when I got the offer from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and I was playing that very sweet and nice mother-to-be in Big Fish, and I had the desire to express anger on my next movie, but I didn’t know what would it be at that time. But I had that desire to express anger in a movie, and then Tina Lombardi came my way, and it was exactly what I needed to express at that time. And working with Jean-Pierre Jeunet—I really love his inner-universe, because he has, like Tim Burton, a very, very strong way to see things. And it was an amazing experience. And I’m in love with Tina Lombardi.
The last one I’ll mention before La Vie En Rose is the one for which you were best known in America before Edith Piaf, Fanny in A Good Year…
Yes. I had the opportunity to meet Ridley Scott, who is a genius. Well, it was a simple story. And, again, it was something that I needed to express—a simple love story about people who think a way and then realize, at a point, that it’s not their real life, and they have the courage to change their way. And I think it’s a beautiful thing to do.
Living in France, where Edith Piaf was such a national icon that her funeral in 1963 stopped traffic in Paris for the first time since the end of World War II, you must have been familiar with her from an early age. Before the film, did you know much about her or enjoy her music?
Well, of course I knew Piaf, as a French citizen, but I didn’t know anything about her life. I knew a few songs—while I didn’t know that many things about her, I loved a few songs. And sometimes, when I’m working on a movie, I use music to help me to get a certain emotion, and some of Piaf’s songs were on my list of music that I used to work. So I was very, very familiar with some of her songs, because it helped me on other movies, too.
Olivier Dahan has said that he wrote the script about Piaf with you in mind before you even knew about it. How did you find out that he wanted you?
Well, very early in the process, my agent called me, and he told me that Olivier Dahan just started to write a script about Piaf’s life, and that he was thinking about me. So, at that time, you know, the script wasn’t written yet. Well, it’s always something when someone thinks of you for a role, and especially when he writes thinking of you. And then I think it was a year later when the script was ready. They sent me the script, and then I met Olivier. I hadn’t met him before.
I believe there is a funny story about how you met him at a bar near the cemetery where Piaf is buried…
Yes! It’s funny, because I used to live not so far from the cemetery, but I made a mistake, giving him an address of a bar which was La Mer Lachaise, and I told him La Pere Lachaise, which is just near the cemetery. So I arrived quite late—because I was waiting for him in the wrong place—and so I ran to the meeting, where he was. And it was just in front of the cemetery, so it was kind of funny. And when I met him for the first time, there was something very natural, very normal in the fact that I was there with him talking about Piaf. I’d just discovered her life at that point, because I had just read the script. And it was something obvious, that we were here together, talking about this.
Did he give you any indication of what had made him think about you for the part right away?
Well, not at that time. But because we did some interviews together to promote the movie when it was finished—the movie was done and about to be released—he told a journalist, because the journalist asked the same question. And he told that the first picture he saw of Piaf—the picture that gave him the desire to do a movie about Piaf—he saw something similar in her eyes and mine. And also he said that he thought that I had—how can I say this?—an ability to play tragedy. I don’t know if it’s the right way to say this? And that it was something interesting for Piaf, the character.
Who is Pascal Luneau , and how was he able to help you?
Pascal Luneau—I worked with him on two movies a few years ago. When I started working, I felt that I needed to be helped by someone, to help me find things inside me, and his name came right away in my mind. I mean, it was obvious for me that I had to work with him, because I knew that he would guide me. He knows me, and I knew that he would know how to—sorry, it’s kind of hard to express—but I didn’t want to do what I would call a ‘classical way’ to discover a character, especially because I play her from nineteen to forty-seven, so I would have to play an old woman. And I didn’t want to rehearse some scenes of the script. I didn’t want to find the outside—find the way she talked, the way she moved. I really wanted to understand her. And I didn’t try to look like her or to sound like her—of course, I wanted it to be close to her, but I didn’t try to imitate. So I never experienced the voice or the body language before being on the set. I watched her a lot—the movies she did as an actress, the personal footage, the TV interviews, all these. I listened to her a lot, of course. I fed myself with her. And the most important thing for me was to understand who she was.
I read that you made a deliberate decision, when you were preparing to play Piaf, not to speak with people who knew her. Why was that?
Oh, no, no, no—I didn’t make that decision. I mean, I didn’t feel right away that I needed to meet people, but actually I met some people. I met two people who really helped me understand a lot of things about her. I met Georges Moustaki, who wrote ‘Milord,’ and who was one of her lovers. And I met Ginou, who was her best friend for fifteen years, and she really opened her heart and a part of her life for me in a very generous way, and she really helped me and supported me in all the process.
Can you describe the different sorts of makeup that were used to help you perfect the appearance of Piaf at different stages of her life, and how long it to apply them? I imagine it was quite an ordeal for you to go through…
Yes. [laughs] It was very hard, because we had to find several makeups. When she’s nineteen, and when she’s thirty, it was kind of easy—because it was the youngest part, it was kind of easy. And then, when she’s forty, and when she’s forty-five, and when she’s forty-seven, it was kind of hard to transform a thirty-year-old woman into a forty-seven-year-old woman who looked almost seventy at that time. The different makeup would take from three hours when she is forty, like four hours when she is forty-five, and five hours when she is very, very old—even if she was not that old, but at the end, with the red hair. And, yeah, it was five hours. But the thing is I slept—almost all the makeup session, I was sleeping. [laughs] So it was not so—well, it was kind of weird, because you have all those smells like alcohol, latex, acrylic painting, and it would go into my dreams, and I had very, very weird dreams during all those makeup sessions.
That’s funny! And prosthetics? They used some prosthetics as well, right?
Yes. They used prosthetics on the cheeks and—ah, I can’t remember how to say this, ‘le menton’—well, under the head?
The chin?
Yeah, the chin! The chin. Just under the chin. And a lot of latex. And, for the last part, I had a bald cap, and then a wig with very few red hair.
And is it true you shaved back your own hairline, as well?
Yes. I shaved my eyebrows and my hairline, because she had a very, very big front, so to make it bigger we shaved. [laughs]
The next thing I want to ask you about is the singing. Although you appear to be singing in the film, the voice we hear, from what I understand, is that of either Piaf, from recordings, or Jil Aigrot, who performed Piaf songs that were not recorded…
Exactly.
What sort of preparation did you do in order to make it seem so believable that you were singing, when in fact you were really lip-syncing to their voices?
Well, it was a very, very important point for me, the lip-sync. I was very, very worried, because I saw many movies with lip-sync, and it’s very rare when it’s well done. Because it’s a very, very difficult thing to get. So I watched all the movies I remembered I saw with lip-sync in it which were not good, to try to understand why it was not good. And then I understood that. The whole body is involved in the lip-sync. The tiniest movement will change the sound. And I realized that the silence was almost more important than the words; that the way you breathe is very, very important in the lip-sync. Basically, everything—every tiny movement of the body—is very important. And then, well, I rehearsed for hours and days in order to be almost perfect technically, to be able to let myself go to the interpretation of the song.
You videotaped yourself, right?
Yes, I did this. Well, the first thing is that it’s very interesting, because you find your own language. You have to write the silence and the breathing with some letters, like ‘h,’ ‘f,’ you know—the way you breathe, you find your own way to write this down. So it’s kind of funny but, at a point, it’s almost the same thing, so you always have to be very accurate and repeat again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again ‘til it’s almost perfect. I really had to believe that I was singing when I watched the recording of myself. It was the hardest part of the whole project, actually.
Although you lip-sync the songs, the speaking voice is yours, but it doesn’t really sound like you do now. I’ve read that you did certain things with your voice in the mornings to achieve this different sound…
Yes. I mean, all the songs were from Piaf, and she had a very special speaking voice, so I really had to find inside me the voice of the character. And by singing every morning, I managed to lower my voice and to find a way to sound like the songs. So, yeah, I sang a lot. But she sang every day of her life! So I knew that it was a good way to make a contact with the character.
As we’ve discussed, you play Piaf at different stages of her life. Were those stages filmed in sequence, or did the shooting schedule make it so you had to jump back-and-forth between the different ages? If that’s what you did, that must have been very challenging…
Well, when I saw the schedule, and I saw that it was really back-and-forth, and that my fourth day of shooting was a sequence from 1963—when she says that she will cancel The Olympia and that guy comes and plays ‘Non Je Ne Regrette Rien’ for her—when I saw that that was like the fifth day of shooting, I was like, “Okay, it’s the big jump right away. Now, I’m freaking out.” It was not following the script, but it was like the script, back-and-forth. After two weeks, we had been doing all the periods and—well, I found my place in all the periods. I really had a great pleasure to play all the periods. And so I realized that it was, at the end, the best way to not freak out—for example, if we had waited for the end to shoot all the oldest part, I would have waited with so much fear that maybe it would have, like, stuck me into fear. But because, I mean, I had to jump right away, well, I did. And then, after this, it was kind of easy to jump from a period to another. And I have to say that after, like, four, five, or six days—I mean, a week—of forty-seven years old, I was so happy to be young again! [laughs] And I remember telling my friends, “Oh, I’m so happy I’m young today!” [laughs] Because I’d been old for, like, ten days, and I’m so happy I’m young again. So it was perfect—it was the perfect schedule, actually. It would have been harder if we would have shot like in in-time.
I’d like to ask you about are few scenes from the film that particularly stand in people’s memories. For instance, the scene in which she learns that her lover Marcel has been killed and somehow ends up performing in front of an audience; or the scenes in which she’s an old woman in California; or the last scene, which you referred to, in The Olympia Theater. Can you talk about what it was like to make these most memorable scenes?
Well, the death of Marcel Cerdan was very special because it’s only shot—it’s like five minutes. You start the sequence and you go through the end. It was a very special day. Because it’s only one shot, you have to be very, very concentrate—everybody has to be very, very concentrate—on what they are doing, what we are doing, because if you do a mistake after three minutes, you have to do the whole thing again. And because it’s very emotional, and there’s many motions to go through in only five minutes, everybody had to really be together. So it created a very special atmosphere and, well, it was one of the most beautiful days—even if all the days were beautiful during all the shooting, this day was very special. And it was like a dance of all the actors, and the crew, and the camera—it was really sort of a dance. And it represents her life, too. I mean, she’s happy in the morning—really happy—and then the tragedy—the huge tragedy—but, at the end, she will be on stage. So it’s like her life in five minutes. So it was a very, very special scene. The scene on the beach was very, very special, too, because it was the last scene. It was the last day of shooting; we ended with that sequence, the interview. So I was very—well, it was the end. I had spent months of my life with her, and that was it, that was the end, so it was very special because of this. And The Olympia? Well, we were in the real Olympia, and she saved the Olympia several times—it was her place. And after three months and a half that we were shooting in Prague, we had just got back to Paris, so all the people in the extras were French—they knew Edith Piaf, so it was kind of special, too. And Ginou was there, so that was very, very special, and she supported me. She’s an amazing person; really, I love her.
The film has been a great box-office hit in France. Even decades after Piaf’s death, people are still fascinated by her. What do you think she represents to the French people?
She represents someone who is very, very close to people, because she lived so many things, she had so many experiences that she knows people—she knows people from the streets, she knows people from the artistic life, she knows politicians, you know? She knew all kinds of people, and she knew very well how to tell people’s stories, and to share the those emotions of people, and to give them back those emotions through her. So she was very, very close to people.
As you are surely aware, you’re currently favored by most people to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. I know it may be uncomfortable to talk about, but I wonder how this sort of discussion makes you feel. Does it make you feel nervous? Does it make you feel excited? What goes through your mind?
Well, I’m not nervous. I’m really enjoying every minute of that adventure. We went from surprise, to another surprise, to another surprise, and another surprise, and I’m so happy for the movie. I’m so happy for the work we’ve done all together—with Olivier, with the photographer, with the makeup artist, with all the crew. And I’m very happy to have the opportunity to share that movie with people I admire, especially in the United States. I’m a child of American cinema. My heroes as a child were Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, and my favorite movies were Singin’ in the Rain and Annie. So to have the opportunity to share that movie we are so proud of in that country of cinema? It’s something that I really enjoy.
And, just very quickly, there are a lot of people, like myself, who look forward to seeing more of you. I understand you have some exciting film projects in America, including one that will allow you to use your voice—is that correct?
It’s correct! When the strikes will be over. [laughs]
Just so people know, which is that?
It’s Rob Marshall’s project, Nine.
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Sounds like great fun!