Lily-Rose Depp: “In my early childhood, I especially wanted to be like my mother”

Revealed in 2016 with Planetarium and the dancer, this child of the ball does better than confirm all the hopes placed in her in the faithful man of Louis Garrel. A romantic marivaudage where his striking cinegenia and her ease to interpret finely chiseled dialogues by Jean-Claude Carrière are wondering.

While she is currently on the bill of Nosferatufrom Robert Eggers, France 4 will offer Saturday evening The faithful manfrom Louis Garrel. When it was released, at the end of 2018, First had been able to ask a few questions to Lily-Rose Depp. An interview that we leave below, interspersed with other meetings with the actress.

First: in view of your ancestry, we spontaneously tend to imagine that becoming an actress was something natural for you …

Lily-Rose Depp : Very young, there are a few films that I literally watched in a loop. I no longer count the number of times I have seen The Magician of Oz Or You might as well take the wind. But I also had a very European film education. Kid, I was crazy about Sissi Empressof Donkey skinfilms by Louis de Funès… However, I never thought seriously of becoming an actress until I shoot my first scene at 15 years old. But then it was a coincidence. It turns out that my childhood friend, Harley Quinn Smith, shared a scene with my father in Red Tuskwhat did … his father Kevin (Clerks). The idea of ​​bringing us together was therefore like a wink that I have in any case not experienced as the first step of something more important. It was really by playing that I understood that I liked it and that the desire to continue began to develop. Because when I was smaller, like many, I wanted to become a ballerina, model, princess, spy … (laughs)

All that cinema allows …

Exactly ! But in fact, in my early childhood, I especially wanted to be like my mother. Do everything she was doing. And I thank Kevin Smith for having set foot in the stirrup. Since he then gave me a slightly more important role in Trosers yoga. Before I have the chance to continue Planetarium And The dancerto confront me very quickly with more serious universes and to see other facets of the profession of actor.

The faithful man: the Louis Garrel show (critic)

Until Loyal man Directed by Louis Garrel, your partner precisely in Planetarium…

Louis offered me the role directly. And there again it is really a chance because the tests always freak me. (laughs) He called me to tell me that he wanted to make me read something and therefore told me to our appointment the scenario of The faithful man. Going home, I devoured it and obviously wanted to be part of his film

What has attracted you more precisely?

I already liked her first film The two friends. But it was above all an immense privilege for me to be able to play a scenario of Jean-Claude Carrière. The mixture between his writing and that of Louis gives birth to a story whose originality – on an a priori classic theme – in the eyes from the first pages. The situations encountered by the different characters are completely realistic but what they say in these situations seems incredible. There are really few roles that are so intriguing and complex for a young girl my age.

How did you build this character of Eve, in love since his childhood of Abel, camped by Louis Garrel?

From the first reading, I had spotted that it could be easy to consider it just as crazy. However, it was necessary at all costs that I avoid this pitfall because otherwise, no one would understand why Abel was going to be able to get away from her so. But it turns out that I too was a 12-13-year-old daughter who had only one desire: to become a woman. And so I did everything to make the spectator understand both Eve and I understood it. Eve is not an obsessive. She is just a young woman in love with what she considers – from the top of her inexperience – like her male ideal. In love to the point of going to say – without raising his voice – in Marianne, Abel’s partner, to give him his guy without what it will be the war between them. However, in her eyes, Marianne represents the ideal woman to whom she wants only because she has what she wants most in the world. So when she comes to face him, it is with a lot of respect and admiration and without the slightest ounce of aggressiveness or manipulation. What she says spontaneously comes from the heart. My job was to play this improbable situation with the greatest naturalness as possible.

How do we get there?

Thanks to the many readings and rehearsals upstream. Because a film filming over a period of only 4 weeks drastically reduces the right to error. Knowing your character, finding humanity and assimilating the sustained pace of the story was essential before getting started

Have you been immediately comfortable with these extremely literary dialogues, in the noblest sense of the term?

I wanted to pay tribute to these dialogues and to the sensations ultimately very close to each of us that this scenario deploys. Girl as a boy, we all felt at one point this feeling of being too small or small to reach an inaccessible fantasy. This idea that love is reserved for adults and that it is therefore necessary to wait at a time when we want to the opposite everything, right away. I had to hoist my game up to the words imagined by Jean-Claude and Louis. By being aware that any awkwardness on my part would have damaged their work.

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