Rencontre envoûtante avec Mélanie Laurent
Comédienne et désormais chanteuse, on savait Mélanie Laurent touche-à-tout. Elle devient réalisatrice avec « Les adoptés », dans lequel elle joue également, à l’affiche depuis mercredi, et s’affiche en image ensorcelante du parfum Hypnotic Poison de Dior. Rencontre

Ça vous trottait en tête le fait de devenir un jour l’image d’un parfum ?
Non, mais quand une maison comme Dior vous contacte, vous envisagez cette possibilité ! J’avais été sollicitée plusieurs fois mais cela ne convenait pas. Et Dior fut une évidence… Je m’y reconnais, et puis Hypnotic Poison est un parfum hors du commun. Je suis très fière de le représenter.

Que représente Dior pour vous ?
C’est un nom magique, féerique même, qui évoque bien sûr le luxe, l’élégance et la féminité… Etre égérie Dior, c’est vraiment entrer dans l’univers fascinant de la Haute Couture et d’une grande maison de parfum. Plus personnellement, Dior c’est aussi les sublimes robes de princesse créées pour moi pour la cérémonie d’ouverture et de clôture du festival de Cannes où j’étais maîtresse de cérémonie cette année… Les essayages dans les ravissants salons de Couture, la première d’atelier reprenant inlassablement la mesure de la longueur d’une traîne, mon émotion quand j’ai reçu les robes achevées à Cannes. Un rêve de petite fille devenu réalité ! Et puis, j’aime aussi beaucoup l’insolence d’une Maison qui se permet de nommer un parfum Poison car, à sa sortie, son nom fut un scandale

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Beginners’ Mélanie Laurent on Heeding Quentin Tarantino’s Advice and Loving Cats

This weekend, Mélanie Laurent, the 28-year-old French actress known to American audiences for playing the fierce Shoshana in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, co-stars in her second American film, Mike Mills’s Beginners. Beginners, Mills’s follow-up to Thumbsucker, is the very lovely, funny story of a man (Ewan McGregor) whose father (Christopher Plummer) comes out of the closet at 75 and dies five years later, intercut with the story of the same man falling in love with Laurent’s character Anna, a French actress temporarily in L.A., shortly after his father’s death. We spoke with the accented Laurent about the movie (which co-stars a dog), roller coasters, and looking out for the right post-Basterds project.

Hi, this is Mélanie Laurent. I’m an actress.

Hi, I’m Willa. I’m a journalist. When people ask you what you do, is that what you say, “I’m an actress”?
No, I’m trying to say I’m an artist, which is different but [laughing] in France it kind of sounds pretentious.

Ha! It’s kind of pretentious in English, too.
I’m singing and directing and I’m an actress, so I don’t feel like saying, “Oh, I’m an actress, I’m a singer, I’m a director.” I don’t feel like saying that.

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Actor Mélanie Laurent on John Galliano, Lars Von Trier, & Finding Love in ‘Beginners’

In her new film, Beginners, French actor, director, and musician Mélanie Laurent plays Anna, an aspiring starlet who reluctantly falls for Ewan McGregor’s Oliver. As the two lovebirds begin their courtship, Oliver is also plagued by his elderly father Hal’s (Christopher Plummer) inoperable cancer. Hal, an openly gay man who came out of the closet at the age of 75 following his wife’s (and Oliver’s mother’s) death, ignores his mortality and spends more and more time with his young lover, frequenting gay dance clubs and hosting Harvey Milk–themed movie nights.
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Beginners is loosely based on director Mike Mills real-life relationship with his own father, but if McGregor embodies a version of Mills, Laurent is quick to dismiss the idea that she’s portraying his wife, auteur Miranda July.

“No, no, no,” she said over the phone last week. “He’s insisted that I’m absolutely not playing her. If anything, I think I represent one of his ex-girlfriends.” Laurent, who was inducted into the American mainstream in 2009 as the fiery projectionist in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, has had a busy few months, juggling her production schedule while also collaborating on tracks with singer-songwriter Damien Rice, landing a plum gig as the new face of Dior’s Hypnotic Poison fragrance, and acting as Master of Ceremonies at last month’s Cannes International Film Festival.

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There’s a brief bit on Mélanie’s role in the opening ceremony in the blog hosted on the Boston Globe’s website covering Cannes. It’s great to hear she was such a success!

Mélanie Laurent, the vengeful Shosanna of “Inglourious Basterds,” emceed the opening ceremonies, and it must be said: I love her. She came to the stage in a smoky dress whose modest volume never contradicted her physical slightness and began to rhapsodize about the movies and the jury. After a few minutes of whispers and moans, it was obvious she didn’t plan to host the event. She intended to perform it, which, to rousing applause, she did. To her credit, she dispensed with stage patter, although it would have been for something to ask Banderas how he and Salma Hayek felt today doing seaside “Puss in Boots” publicity near a two-story pair of boots.

Source.

You can read part of an interview from Studio Ciné Live where Mélanie finally talks about “Beginners” on the L’Express website. She also talks a bit about Cannes and her other films.

Mélanie Laurent: “Je n’ai jamais ressenti autant de pression”

Entre un très bel album En t’attendant, les concerts, la sortie prochaine du délicieux Beginners avec Ewan Mc Gregor, la maîtresse de cérémonie du Festival 2011 a un emploi du temps aussi surchargé qu’excitant. Elle le passe en revue pour nous.

Le 15 juin, on vous retrouvera dans Beginners de Mike Mills, un film indépendant américain où vous jouez une actrice française amoureuse d’un jeune homme dépressif qui vient de perdre son père, dont il a quelques années plus tôt appris l’homosexualité. Comment avez-vous eu accès à ce projet?
C’est mon agent américain qui m’a fait passer ce scénario en me disant qu’Ewan MacGregor et Christopher Plummer étaient attachés au projet et que pas mal de comédiennes avaient été approchées, dont Michelle Williams. Et même si mon anglais n’est pas parfait, j’ai tout de suite été emballé par l’univers de Mike (Mills). On m’a alors demandé d’envoyer des essais filmés et j’ai eu envie de les faire avec mon ami Benoît Pétré (Thelma, Louise et Chantal). Et il y a parfois des connexions étranges. Car il m’a alors expliqué que c’est la vision du premier film de Mike, Âge difficile obscur, qui lui a donné envie de faire du cinéma ! On a donc fait ensemble un mini court métrage à partir de certaines scènes du film. Et Mike m’a rappelé peu après pour me dire que ces essais correspondaient exactement à sa vision du film. J’étais vraiment très heureuse.

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A big thank you to Virginie, who sent in her scans of Mélanie’s appearance in the latest issue of Marie Claire France! Take a look at them in the gallery. The theme of the issue was “Belle et bien dans mon age”, so the interview talks a lot about aging, body image, and that sort of thing.

Gallery Links:
Magazine Scans > 2011 > Marie Claire France (April)

There is an article on the website for Malibu Magazine on Mélanie that I hadn’t seen before, written back in December. It’s the most in-depth English-language feature on her that I can recall, so definitely worth a read!

No Place to Fall

Yes, Mélanie Laurent starred in Inglorious Basterds. Yes, Mélanie Laurent is French. And yes, Mélanie Laurent is beautiful. But did you know she giggles? A lot? Like a schoolgirl? It could be because she gets nervous and tongue-tied speaking English, seeing as she only recently learned it for her role as Quentin Tarantino’s pensive, chain-smoking Shosanna, a role she never thought would come her way. “For me, doing an American Hollywood project was, like, impressive because I never really wanted to just do American movies because I didn’t think I was capable of doing it. First, I didn’t speak a word of English, so I had to learn fast on set. And second, it was new for me.”

Well, not so new. This magnetic ingénue spent more than a decade as a successful actress in France. But she wanted to do more than just act. Laurent needed a push. Despite her ethereal, almost untouchable beauty, she apparently suffers relationship crises like the rest of us. “I spent three years in a house, in a bad relationship. I wasted a lot of time,” she says now. What changed? “I broke up with a guy!” she laughs.

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I don’t have the scans today, but for any interested parties, Mélanie has been in a couple of other magazines recently: the issue of Gala from Feb. 23 – Mar. 2, with some new photos from the shoot that was in Paris Match, and the cover of the latest Marie Claire France. If you have copies and a scanner, we’d appreciate any donations of scans!