“I’m very surprised to still be here”

Every day, a personality invites itself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Wednesday February 21, 2024: the actor, screenwriter and director, Francis Perrin, for his role in the play “Le Duplex”, at the Théâtre de Paris.

Francis Perrin is an actor, screenwriter and director. Raymond Devos described him as a man of many talents and a complete man of the theater. A former student of the National Higher Conservatory of Dramatic Art, he won three first prizes for comedy then was a resident of the Comédie-Française for a year. In the cinema, he notably played in the films We stole Jupiter’s thigh et The king of idiots, but his real passion is theater. From February 22, he will be on stage with Pascal Légitimus, Anny Duperey and Corinne Touzet in the play Le duplex by Didier Caron at the Théâtre de Paris until March 31. He plays the role of Jean-Jacques Tissandier, a married man, happy to live in his apartment, which he shares with his wife. But that’s without counting on the neighbors above who are looking to recover the accommodation to make a duplex.

franceinfo: This play is a mixture of many things, but we already have the feeling that going on stage and returning to the theater is something that is close to your heart.

Francis Perrin : In a theater, that’s where I feel better, apart from at home, in my house in Vaucluse where I feel good. But I feel like I breathe better when I’m in a theater. It’s extraordinary. I missed it but I wanted to take a step back from my job because I played 9,800 performances, all the same, that’s not nothing in the theater.

The common thread of this piece is the lie and our ability to accept it, to hear it and to detect it.

Yes, then, my character, he gets a kick out of it and he likes it. Anyway, I like these characters who really seem to me to be not very smart people but who hide their game well.

I would like to know at what age you finally decided to go on to a theater stage, which actually made you want to become an actor.

It is very simple. My father, one day, brought me a Grand Guignol at home with puppets and I would have said: “Oh, what is that?” And my father said: “It’s a theater.” It seems that at four years old, I would have said: “I will do theater.”

Was the Conservatory the trigger? You were spotted very quickly.

It was three years of great happiness and then I shared that with Jacques Villeret, Francis Huster, Jacques Weber. It was extraordinary. We had an extraordinary freedom, a carefreeness. I find that it is very important and this desire to exist as well. I forgot André Dussolier with whom I shared the prices.

What is surprising, moreover, is that you were first taught to play valet roles.

That is to say that when I came on stage, well, I don’t have a particularly funny physique, but it seems that to the eye, people want to laugh. So that’s one thing, but I also had a stutter that I managed to control well and then use it in my characters as well.

However, this stuttering comes from a desire to defend your mother. The others made fun of her and it was an armor you created to protect her.

My mother was disabled, she walked poorly, she limped, so she had a cane. And then when she came to pick me up from school in Colombes, I noticed that they were laughing a little. I said to myself : “Hey, if people made fun of me, they wouldn’t make fun of my mother anymore.” And it worked. Every time I have an emotion, it comes back to me.

What also stands out is this need that you had to resume your life each time. This is how you decided to direct too, to offer your cinema and your stories.

I also love the eclecticism that I find in this profession. I also wrote and I like not to stay locked away like that.

“I think I’ve been stuck enough, in the cinema, in the role of the little joker, a little silly and naive.”

Francis Perrin

at franceinfo

It’s a shame because I was offered theater roles afterwards, which were dramatic. But I know that if I had not had, in my life, the desire to do things, to be at the start of things, I think that I would not have been hired much.

I would like to know what this career means to you?

I don’t like looking back too much, but I said to myself: “I’ve done a lot!” But these are always things that I decided to do. It was my choice. I didn’t have a career plan, but I said at the conservatory, I remember, to a journalist who interviewed me: “How do you see your career?” I said : “last.” And I’m very surprised to still be here, very sincerely.

In this room you find Anny Duperey with whom you had a love story.

It’s amazing. We toured together and saw each other again, but it’s a lot of fun to be a couple 50 years later on stage.