While Valérie Lemercier is quite active in film, it has been ten years since the actress last appeared on stage. This has now happened since Wednesday at the Théâtre Marigny, and runs until January 3rd.
In an interview with Point de Vue magazine (via Télé-Loisirs), the 61-year-old actress looks back on her 35-year career, with, of course, its ups and downs. She also discusses a major personal failure: her film 100% Cachemire.
“A nightmare for me”
“You can experience success, then face failures immediately after. But you learn a lot from them. That’s what happened to me after 100% Cashmere in 2013. My film was a complete failure. A nightmare for me.”
Eight years (yes…) after her triumph in the comedy Palais Royal!, in which she played Armelle, a princess in spite of herself, and which attracted over 2.7 million viewers, the actress-director signed 100% Cashmere.
A new comedy in which she played Gilles Lellouche’s partner, experiencing the joys of adoption. The film attracted just over 465,000 viewers, but remains her lowest-grossing film, alongside her very first film as a director, Quadrille (1997), which was a resounding failure. 100% Cachemire was also panned by critics, garnering a disastrous average of 1.8 out of 5 on AlloCiné. The average audience score is no kinder: barely 1.9…
“The more it was too much, the easier it was”
In 2017, her Marie-Francine sold 883,000 tickets. Enough to put a smile back on her face. A few years later, she gained a real following with Aline. In this film inspired by the career of singer Céline Dion, Valérie Lemercier played Aline Dieu, the fictional alter ego of the Quebecois actress. A role that earned her the César Award for Best Actress in 2022.
It’s therefore not entirely surprising that she considers this film, in the interview, “her greatest achievement. Besides, this film wouldn’t have been a success without the failure of 100% Cashmere. I was able to allow myself to do things, I dared to work on instinct, to diminish my innate sense of detail. The gamble of a biopic was risky. Paradoxically, the more over-the-top it was, the easier it was.” A taste for risk paid off, as the film piqued the interest of 1.31 million viewers.
She will soon return to comedy with Scalpel, whose subject is, you’ll guess, cosmetic surgery.
