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TO
observe that a French actress is beautiful is ordinarily
an exercise in the incredibly obvious. But given Marion
Cotillard’s titanic and tortured performance in La
Vie en Rose—in which she twists, bends and mutilates
her physique to recreate the legendary chanteuse Edith
Piaf—the transformation is unforgettable. Lithe, buoyant
and with eyes so blue they put the Pacific to shame,
Cotillard had just won a Best Actress Golden Globe when
John Anderson caught up with her at the Chateau Marmont
in Hollywood.
 You
look a little different.
Hopefully for me I don’t look like—well, I think she’s
beautiful. I loved when I read the script that this guy
was offering me the opportunity to tell a whole life, to
be 40, 44, 47; very unusual. When I read this, the first
thing I thought was “That guy’s crazy.” But I love that
he offered it to me. I felt right away it was something
huge for an actor.
The film
follows Piaf from her abominable childhood to her death
in 1963. What was the toughest part for you?
The
lip-synching. So difficult. I was very, very, very
stressed about the lip sync because I’ve seen many
movies with lip-synching in it, and most of the time
it’s not so good. So the first thing I did was watch
these movies again and figure out why it wasn’t good.
Olivier (Dahan, the director) wanted Piaf’s voice from
the beginning and we had to do songs she never recorded,
from when she’s young and singing in the street. So the
first thing I did was watch those movies again.
Was it a
painfully physical task? After all, your Piaf looks
something like a question mark by the time she hits her
40s.
I found
a little trick to be smaller—I contracted all my muscles
from here to here [ribs to waist] and in doing this I
was closer to her position. But after two weeks my back
was hurting so hard. I had to shoot for four months, so
I had massage and stuff like this, but the thing was I
was so more than happy, so full of being on that set
doing what we were doing, that there were no
difficulties because there was so much passion and joy.
The only day that was very bizarre was the day we shot
her death, because I stayed all day long in the bed. I
knew if I got up and joked with the crew it would take
me too long to get back to that state. Which is so
weird.
Did you
find it a great responsibility to be portraying an icon
like Piaf?
I think
the responsibility is related to ego and I really didn’t
need any ego at that time. I needed to just go into the
work. So I never felt any responsibility. I knew I loved
her more than enough not to betray her, and not betray,
maybe, the people who love her. If you think about it as
a big responsibility, you think about yourself. You’re
not saying “OK, let’s go! Let’s see where we can go!”
Anywhere
dangerous?
The
script was beautiful, intimate, but not a portrait done
by someone who wanted to show only her best side. It was
hard sometimes. But she was hard.
Has
there been resistance from Piaf fans who didn’t want to
know about that?
Oh sure.
She had a very tyrannical character sometimes. She
really loved people but her tyranny came from fear of
being alone. I didn’t know her, but when you’re
abandoned as a child your fear about being alone is very
hard to get rid of.
I read
an interview, her last interview, a year after the end
of the movie—I had it with me on the set for four months
and never read it, I don’t know why—but it was an
interview she gave really close to her death. It wasn’t
published ’til afterward and what she says in that
interview is exactly what I found out about her. She
talked about her regret that sometimes she was not so
nice with some people. She knew it. And she couldn’t
help it.
Did you
have a hard time adjusting to that dark side of her
No
[laughs], but I had a hard time accepting that she was
tyrannical. I remember working with my coach and at some
point he stopped me and said, “You have so much
admiration for her that in a way it stops you from
meeting her entirely.” If you refuse the dark side of
someone, you can’t meet that person entirely. So I knew
I had to accept it. I knew he was right. |
