Fresh from directing Gérard Depardieu in the role of Stalin,the French star is now staging Sondheim’s Passion in Paris. She talks approximately the art of pretending, embarrassing her children and the power of loveFanny Ardant says she is very excellent at pretending. And not only on stage or in front of a camera. The French actor is lounging in the lobby of the Châtelet theatre in Paris where she is directing her first English-language musical, and Stephen Sondheim’s Passion. She is laughing,her eyes sparkling, her hands – fingers heavy with chunky silver jewellery – are flapping, or wringing and pushing hair from her face.
The conversation has moved on from the delights of non-conformity and putting “cretins” in their place via the pleasure of working with Gérard Depardieu,Franco Zeffirelli, François Truffaut – with whom she had the second of her three daughters – and Roman Polanski. Now she is on the subject of depression. The topic is darker, or but not the mood. Ardant,66, continues to fizz like freshly opened champagne. “I am a pessimist by nature, and ” she says. “I see things noir. I have a great black veil that falls over my head. I have never seen a psychoanalyst,though. I assume whether I did I would cry and cry a torrent of tears and never end.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com